


Chant

by Molliweide



Category: Doctor Who, The Changeover - Margaret Mahy
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 08:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 52,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4472162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molliweide/pseuds/Molliweide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose Tyler/10th Doctor AU in Margaret Mahy's Changeover world. Rose is a student teacher and Jon Carlisle (10th Doctor) is a new and temporary Maths teacher. Rose has had a warning that her life is going to change suddenly, but will it force her to finally confront the fact that only she knows? That he is a witch?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Doctor Who or related characters and I certainly don't own Mahy's work, though I have three copies of this particular book. If you like the story, look up the book for I cannot do this marvelous writer justice. (fixed some space formatting issues that seem to be unique to AO3)

The bottle of conditioner she carefully placed back in the basket had a lovely, dark-skinned beauty, rinsing waist length black hair under a jungle waterfall, but the bottle was a lie. “Made in Liverpool,” adorned the backside, after the lengthy warning labels and ingredients that were only partially decipherable with her one term of college chemistry.

Just for a moment, Rose had been able to imagine the jungle waterfall, but the cold shock of the flat's sudden loss of warm water was more than enough accelerate her morning routine.

Outside in the the flat, the kettle scream furiously from the hob. Rose, broke her reverie and emerged from her shower to find no towel in the rail. She could hear her mum, moving about in the living area, killing the kettle, and Rose tried in vain to shake the water from her body and hair.

“Mum, towel?” she called fitfully, spying a rumpled towel wadded up under the sink. She grabbed it eagerly, burying her hands into it's damp mustiness. “Oh blast! It's wet.”

“First one up gets the dry towel, love,” Jackie shouted from over her tea and toast at the table that was unceremoniously sandwiched between the oversize couch and the kitchen wall.

The tiny bathroom they all shared was so poorly ventilated that it was pretty much hopeless to see a reflection in the mirror for at least ten minutes after running a shower. This suited Rose, though, she never was particularly fond of her reflection in the mornings. Her best friend, Shareen, had repeatedly complimented Rose on her figure, but hadn't been as complimentary on her looks. “You look fine from a distance, but Rose you really gotta give up on the blonde if you aren't going to keep up on your roots.”

Rose didn't want to go back to the dull, natural ash hair that she shared with her mum. They both fought and lost that battle. Jackie was an excellent colorist, but finances being what they were, neither of them could afford the luxury of timely touch-ups. Rose was happy with her life with her mother and brother, the she yearned for travel and a more personal space. Just a few months until she finished her fifteen week stint as a student teacher in her final practicum and could find a permanent or supply job and flat of her own.

Out in the hallway it was Jackie's turn to grouse. “I can't have arrived home in just one,” she was saying, “I would have definitely noticed stepping into the puddle off the bus yesterday.”

“Lost shoe, lost shoe!” announced Tony as Rose clad only a a towel ran past him into her room.

Closing the door, Rose stopped. Just for a moment she was frightened, and then for a moment again, she felt it, like her very soul was a plucked string.

“Bugger it, I've looked everywhere,” Jackie said. She was descending into a morning panic that might derail the entire day. Rose, trying to shrug off her morning fear, found the one clean, professional outfit that she had left before laundry day and pulled it onto her wet body.

“It's happening,” said a voice in her head. “Bad Wolf is going to happen, it has happened.”

“What's is going to happen?” Rose asked before she realized the voice was only in her head.

It's a warning, “Bad Wolf” again, she thought with a sinking heart. She been warned before and they where infrequent but unforgettable. The warnings were beyond her control, an event that is destined to happen that no matter how prepared she found herself to be, was still jolting. She should be able to alter things, but the best she could hope for was to be strong.

“No shoe, no shoe!” chanted Tony, beyond her closed door.

Rose faced her un-fogged bedroom mirror, pulling a brush through her wet hair and then carefully braiding it to hide the wetness. If she was lucky her bangs would dry straight and she'd have a head full of soft curls by end of day. Her reflection was rebellious though. Suddenly older than her twenty-two years, an true adult staring back at he child in an adult's body she knew herself to be. That older face looked back with knowledge and memories of pleasures she would not recognized and just as she started studying her older-self, her true reflection merged back into being. Warning and enticement in her future.

“Stop it!” she growled at her reflection. She shook her head and when she looked back her brown eyes, bottle blond hair and wide mouth had returned to their usual place in the universe.

“Mum, help!” she bolted out of her room and into the tiny bedroom her mother shared with Tony. Almost tripping across her mother in the ridiculous position of scrabbling under the bed looking for the lost shoe. “Mum, warning, Mum!” plainly exasperated with Jackie ignoring her distress in favor of a blasted black pump.

“Calm down, love” Jackie irritated voice echoed up through the mattress. “Just tell me how a perfectly ordinary shoe can go missing two days running, eh?”

“Mum, I looked in the mirror and my reflection went all wibbly and older all of a sudden.” Rose said.

“Pfft. Wait until you are pushing forty, that'll happen everyday.” Jackie declared, brushing the dust off the knees of her capris. Tony stood in the doorway, holding his Booboo doggie and watching the pair of them like they were otters in the zoo, doing tricks for his entertainment.

“I hate days like this, I'm calling in sick,” Rose announced. “Its just too dangerous to go out when I've had a warning. A strong cuppa, a good book and binge of low budget sci-fi will fix it.”

“Don't you dare. Not on a Thursday, young lady,” Jackie cried. “I need you, Rose. It's a late night and you have to collect Tony from the school, get him fed and in bed, and you can't do that lying about all day.”

“Mum, I didn't plan it this way,” Rose protested. “Bad Wolf, Mum, something serious. You don't remember what it's like, when it happen before.”

“Tell me later,” said Jackie, but Rose knew that no matter how precisely she described the sensation, it was asking too much of her mother to have faith in her gut feeling. Especially in the morning when their three separate lives where so divergent and her mother was the only one keeping hold of the reins.

Jackie was struck with sudden inspiration and dashed for the top of the bookshelf, plucking her prize, wayward trainer from the upper ledge. Rose relaxed for a moment, the morning stress suddenly relieved before looking out the dim windows of the flat to the oppressive sky. Summer was coming soon, the end of the term, graduation, and hopefully a life. What should be beautiful was unexpectedly oppressive, like humidity in August, a hot wolfish breath at her neck.

“Where is your satchel, Tony?” asked Jackie as the boy dashed underfoot. His satchel contained his spare set of clothes, his library book to return, the illustrated “How to Train Your Dragon” book, and his school-home folder. He carefully placed Booboo doggie on top of his other valuable possessions.

“Ooo, look at the time. We've got to run, loves.” Jackie pulled her purse, phone and keys out the bowl by the door and shooed her charges onto the landing. “Up for a run Rose, because I have a feeling that ole' Dick is driving bus today, and he waits for no one,” she grumbled about the pensioner detective sergeant turned bus driver.

“There she goes, mate!” Rose whispered to Tony. “Run, run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me. I'm the gingerbread man.” Tony dashed ahead

“You can't catch me, gingerbread man running, chased by Fox,” Tony pulled Booboo Doggie from his satchel, hugging him fiercely in case the fox came by. “Fox eats gingerbread man, Rose,” he whispered sadly.

“I wish I had a Booboo Doggie,” Rose said. “Could use one, myself right now.” They hurried to board the bus, Jackie, Rose, Tony, Booboo Doggie and all. The bus belched in welcome.

“See love, all settled,” crowed Jackie and they found a bench to occupy.

“Oh mum, not on a day with a warning!” Rose said. “For a second there, I thought you'd slip under the bus and get mashed up.”

“Oh, piffle. You and your warnings!” Jackie said in the voice she typically reserve for Tony.

“Fine, don't believe,” said Rose. “I can't blame you for it, but it's still true. Everything lights up like the final battle in Death to Mantodeans saying, Warning! Warning! Warning!”

“Have you been playing that blasted game again, Rose?” Jackie remarked gladly changing subjects in favor of something much less superstitious than Rose's childhood fear of the big bad wolf. “I'd wish you stayed clear of that game slaved crowd.” Always too many young men who couldn't or wouldn't get decent work, not the sort she wanted cavorting with her Rose, especially now that her life was sorted out.

“Bad Wolf!” insisted Rose refusing the dodge to safer subject matter. “Everything looses it's color, time flows differently, things that should be connected stand separate and totally unrelated things blend into each other like time has stopped and they pile up like cars on the motorway behind a wreck.” She slowed her rant. “The weekend Dad left, before you knew about Tony coming, I had warnings. That's why I tried to be brave although I was terrified it could have been worse.”

“Your Dad is happier now, that he ever was when we were together.” Jackie latched onto what was important to her. Pete has always been very happy with be with Rose, they where so similar, but Tony's birth struck him as an attempt at entrapment and his relations with the family had been strained of late, poor finances not withstanding.

“The first time it happened, remember? Jimmy beat me up and left me abandoned in that cheap dive in Amsterdam.” Rose was never displeased that he never came back, but the shame of having to work off their debt that she has foolishly put all in her name alone and having quit school at sixteen like every other estate chav still stung. Crawling back to Jericho Street Comprehensive and begging for re-admittance stripped every shred of dignity she had left.

“The second, Rita Mae died. Tripped on that damn shag carpet at the landing.” Mickey was still beside himself for that, his gran being his only loyal family.

“And just at the beginning of the term when Jon Carlisle started with the sixth forms,” she went on.

“Jonathan Carlisle!” Jackie gave a little yelp of laughter. She sounded scandalized. “What on earth is there about that head in the clouds, stick of a man, that you need a warning for? It's like being warned about little red rather than the wolf....Isn't he the savior of the school, started that sixth form program? Taking the physics club out to shoot off rockets? Clean, hardworking to a fault, single and a bit dull really!”

Jackie may have been being dismissive but it wasn't her fault. Rose had been rather obsessed with him and she only had her descriptions to go on.  
Jonathan Carlisle had suddenly appeared at Heath Comprehensive at the Easter holiday, supposedly covering the paternity leave of the regular physics teacher. Just a short term supply job through the summer holiday. Rumor had it that his mother had been the headmistress a couple of decades back, a well known figure in the local community and somehow related to the family who's land was seized in the public works projects that became the council estates where she now lived. No one could remember a boy-child born to the headmistress though, it was like he appeared out of thin air, a man fully grown. Penelope Carlisle had never married and never bothered to explain anything other than he was her son, apparently a genius, and marked out by a terrible tendency to babble around a subject taking twice as long to arrive at a conclusion or just lose his train of thought, before diving into something totally unrelated.  
His unfortunate reputation with the other teachers was that he couldn't resist a smart-alec answer. This did not worry Rose, in that she had only exchange a few dozen words with him over the term. On those rare occasions he was hesitant, burning with a remarkable smile and hint of a shared secret. Rose never mentioned this special smile or her suspected reason for it.

Jackie was moved by Rose's quiet moment to comment, “If Jonathan Carlisle is the worst thing you are warned about, you've got nothing to worry about.”

The bus threaded its way down the potholed streets like a behemoth of the Silurian era. The gates of the Heath Comprehensive where just ahead past the final traffic circle on her commute. Rose knew a lot of people despised the estates, but she cherished her life there, knowing that all too soon things would change and with the warning in the air perhaps not for the better.

“Jonathon Carlisle is a witch!” she said. “No one knows but me.”

“Sweetheart, if you sat about all day thinking of a witch in our midst, you could not have come up with a more unlikely subject than Jon Carlisle. Now if you fingered his mother Penelope or even his grandmother, old Verity Smith. Changes the story, that does. Those old dames have first class craziness in their blue blood.”

“Are you done yet, mum?” Rose interrupted.

“How those two raised that boy between them, is beyond me. Old Verity is got dementia they say and Penelope is so stuck in the past that she looks like she walked out of Mad Men,” Jackie continued.

“You done yet?” asked Rose. “Look – I know all about Jon Carlisle. I notice, he's manic one moment, dark and brooding the next. No one sees that, he's got a false sheen of normalcy, like he alters the mood of the people around him to like him automatically. He puts off a field of nothing to see here, move along, but it doesn't work on me. When he drops the pretense, it's on purpose. I notice him do it, mum.”

“You've never said anything about this before. I'm a bit confused,” said Jackie.

“He's hiding, mum. He just wants to be left alone. He's got to be pushing thirty yet when I look at him without the false normalcy he projects, he's vast and inscrutable, something ancient and alien. What causes such depth in a person?” Rose sighed heavily as the bus came to her stop and she collected her bag.

“Well at least you know he doesn't have a broomstick, he has that bright blue Fiat right?” Jackie remarked giving a cheeky grin.

“It's a Mercedes, mum,” Rose said with a sigh. “I knew you wouldn't believe me.”

“Rose, dear, how could I? You've never mentioned your warnings before they happened. There is nothing we can do to change this, right? But I do know that if you don't get off this bus, right now you will be late for work. Rose, be careful with yourself today and be careful with Tony after school....just in case.” She gave Rose a quick squeeze.

Rose stepped off the bus into an unseasonable early morning heat. The air was sweet and oppressive with a faint hint of mint that reminded her of childhood illnesses.

“Hurry up, Tyler!” said the staff member unlocking the outer gate. It was Jonathan Carslie himself. “Staff meeting started a minute ago,” he reminded her as he wound the chain around the post.

He had brown eyes with a habit of turning black if you looked at them sideways. Honest eyes some said, but Rose found them tricksome and wily. Endless pathways and mazes within his gaze leading nowhere safe and she had to stop herself from getting lost.

Rose and Jon smiled at each other now, not in friendship, but in a shared secret held between their breaths. Rose walked past him, into the school gates, facing a day with warnings, with the living embodiment of a warning at her back. The warning had come, she had ignored it, and her day swallowed her up with strange jaws. She felt the jaws snap and the day swallowed her whole, the entire time feeling Jon's gaze on her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a snippet of Jon in this chapter and then its going to be a long wait.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning, warning, warning.

It was in keeping with habit that Jackie would ask Rose, “Well, how was school today?” and in keeping to her habit Rose would say “Fine,” meaning that nothing was really fine, but that nothing was important enough to share with her mum. Shareen's life had wandered off in a different direction with serial boyfriends and their resulting children. Mickey had dumped her for Trish, accusing her of getting airs and graces, and then discovered his own airs and graces when he was accepted into the competitive robotics program at his polytechnic college. So Rose was left with her mum, Mo and her co-workers. Of course working under Stephen Willis was a unique experience, not the least of which was his attempts at setting her up with some of the younger single teachers he knew.

“Come on Tyler, you've got the youth, you've got the looks, don't be such as dead loss! I'm trying to arrange your future happiness,” he said at lunch break.

“It's Thursday, day of domestics, little brothers, soggy bath times and not moping about my future happiness,” said Rose.

“I'm sure Jeff Delobel over at Coal Hill would like some domestic responsibilities,” he pestered her? “You remember, teaches French? He likes you.”

“And I'm sure you are just making that up to have an excuse to declare a double date,” Rose responded and felt a bit happy because Jeff was a little bit fit.

“Am not,” Stephen replied. “He discretely asked about your availability – saw you with your brother and the age difference didn't add up in his head. He did want to assume you were taken already, but didn't want to intrude.”

“Have him friend me on Facebook and we'll see if he'll chat, I cannot promise anything more than that. I could be teaching in Cardiff next Fall, or maybe something exotic like Guam, I hear they are desperate for anything that speaks English and has a degree.” Having a date to distract her from her life as it was would be nice for a change.

She was pondering this same distraction as she waved her key fob in front of the security entry at Tony's childcare. On spying Rose he cavorted, skipped and hopped in quick succession up to Rose, before latching onto her with fierce hug. She was overcome with a fierce maternal instinct, like Tony was a sneak preview to a life she wanted, complete with adoring little boys who she may one day call her own. A life that was as present so far into the future she didn't even have the foggiest idea of the who, when and where of it. Fighting tears from Tony's attack of brotherly love she stuffed the feelings down inside herself to ponder at a later date.

“We've had a good day with little Tony,” said Ms. Anna Marie, his lead teacher. “He's missing Hannah something fierce, she's at home with pink eye again, little dear,” she ruffled Tony's hair. “Little Romeo, just four and has himself a little girlfriend,” Anne Marie beamed. “Your mum is on pick up tomorrow, right? Make sure you tell her to check her account balance, the director is ...” She couldn't finish the sentence, she liked to think that paydays were something magical and that everyone stayed in a happy place, rather than stressing out already stretched families.

“Yeah, the 15th of the month, mum normally gets her check, if it comes....” Rose didn't want to finished the sentence, her father was more fairytale than reality these days. Her parents hadn't formally divorced, but the subtext of her conversations with her father implied that there may be another woman in his life and there was an inevitability to that change in her family situation.

“Well, time to go, Tony. Chicken and chips for you, then a bath and bed time.” Rose was looking at Tony, still pondering the future son while looking at the current brother. His hair was their father's strawberry blond, with dark undertones. “We'll make mum a big bowl of salad, even though we know she'll just grab something unhealthy and greasy and I'll let you cut the carrots, eh Tony?”

It was just a short walk down a moderately busy side street from Tony's childminder to the Peckham shops. Jackie worked an a tiny triangular kiosk at the intersection of Peckham High and Peckham Hill Streets. They catered mostly to a male clientele, much like the shoe-shine boys at the airport, and with a cleaver business forward name, Close-it Hair Designs, Jackie was able to keep her little family afloat most months if the tips were good.

What was also beneficial was that the Main branch of the Peckham Public Library was right across the street. Rose's routine on Thursday: check up with Jackie, check out the library and get Tony books for the week, and check into the dinner specials at Cod Fellas. If the weather was nice, they'd play in the Belleden Junior School playground before going home.

A blast of cold institutional air welcomed her and Tony as they passed the IR security sensors and made a bee-line for the children's alcove. Rose helped Tony tip his illustrated book into the return slot before flashing a smile at Mrs. Hemmerling, the children's librarian. Rose wandered over to the DVD section, hoping to find the new release of the musical Allegro, Stephen has recommended it after he scored free tickets for a December show by winning the Pub Quiz, and he wanted Rose's opinion if it was suitable to present at the secondary level or if he should just recommend it for an adult group. She wasn't going to poor over it and do an in-depth score analysis, but is was nice that after twelve weeks on the job, that he valued her opinion.

Tony wandered up, two books selected and Rose added her DVD to the pile before spying the audiobook version of “How to Train Your Dragon”. Snatching that, she took her little pile back to Mrs. Hemmerling's desk and dug around her bag for her library card.

“Stamp, stamp,” pleaded Tony, thrusting out his hand for Mrs. Hemmerling to expertly place a smiling star stamp on his proffered hand. “Another,” he pleaded, knowing somewhere in that desk she had a moon too.

Rose found her card and processed her books as another little family came up behind them. “Two hands?” Tony begged.

“Twice next week, I promise,” winked the librarian. Tony sadly joined his sister as the walked out the door and into the near summer heat.

“My bare hand is sad, it wants a stamp too.” Tony sighed.

“Next time, love,” Rose anxiously guided across the intersection and onto the footpath. The were not the very edge of the commercial district. They stood under the verandah of the new agent's next to them was the old print shop now transformed into a brand new pizzeria with blinking neon signs, twittering with fat, cartoonish Italian bakers and there tacked on the end before the alley was the tiniest of buildings. It was a cupboard sized storefront, small display cases with shiny bits of tourist rubbish, clove cigarettes, and lottery tickets. It had been closed the last few years, but Tony had always stopped to look into the tiny window.

“My shop!” he believed. It was child sized and Tony assumed that it was his to run for other children. This evening it was surprisingly lit up, a sandwich board grandly proclaiming GRAND OPENING THURSDAY NIGHT. It's display cases cleaned and transformed filled with bits of hand crafted toys, marbles, big buttons, cakes of marzipan, truffles, vintage tops and vials of wooden beads and string. “In we go?” Tony questioned with a whoop and, of course, in he went.

LITTLE KNICKNACKS announced a banner across the window. Yet, once in the shop, Rose wanted to rush back out, for it reeked of the humid mint smell that had haunted her since this morning – the smell of something dead and rotting, but covered with a false perfume to conceal its wrongness. It has happened, it will happen, it is happening, her senses assailed her as she realized that the warning she had been preparing for was suddenly upon her. She was spinning apart at the seams as she watched in horror as her brother dove further into the shop, well beyond her reach.

“Tony, come back!” she yelled at her brother. “No one is manning the shop.” But the moment she uttered those works, a man rose from the behind the display case where he had be apparently dusting or straightening, although very quietly. He was smiling, a thing smile over big teeth, yellowing lips to cover them. His eyes were sunken in giving the impression of a sock puppet pulled tight over a bony frame. What little hair he had was wisps above his ears and his skin was mottled with liver spots.

“Oh.....” he whispered with a manic glee in his eye seeing Tony, “a baby!” He bleated the first syllable. “A baaaaab-y!” he squeaked and the air in the shop became overwhelmed with the stale mint that had been dogging Rose all day.

“He's four,” said Rose. “Not a baby.”

“Close enough for me,” he exclaimed with a thin giggle. “I'm old, and you are all mewling infants to me. I look ancient, don't I?” he queried. Rose could not disagree.

“P-shaw, girl. You aren't supposed to agree with me. What a delight this little one is. So full of life, so little of that left at my age. I bet you he still hears the songs of the fairies and sees the colors of creation itself. So much to do, so much time to live.”

Rose didn't mind hearing her brother admired so earnestly, but as the man leaned forward the smell of mint hit her full-force and she was reminded of nearly-spoiled milk, moldy basements, piles of leaves and trash, willful ignorance and rotting time. It had to be him, because nothing in her life had ever smelled like that.

“Doesn't like me?” he asked, skirting the counter top. “Doesn't like me one bit,” he tittered. “Not fair, because I like him. Could consume his cuteness in one setting if it were a meal, I could.”

“What's your name, child?” he asked.

“Tony,” Rose found herself answering almost compelled to do so, but she didn't know why.

The man's had reached for Tony from a neatly pressed cuff, discolored blotches on his skin that looked like they were weeping sores. “We're leaving,” Rose said. “We didn't bring any money.”

My name is Prydon Burosa,” the man went on, ignoring Rose. “Not unfamiliar in the business world. This is not a serious endeavor you know, just a storefront for baubles and trinkets. Here today....” he did not continue.

“Tony, time to go!” Rose yelled, wondering why suddenly her legs refused to work normally. “We just wanted to look around.”

“You did, you shall,” he simpered and continued with genuine generosity, “and I'll make it worth your while little man. Do I see a stamp on your right hand? Is your left hand jealous? Would you like another stamp to match?”

Tony was rarely shy, but he dug himself into Rose's leg, and temped by the stamp, half raised his left arm.

“Oh, hold it out proper. Offer it up or I can't make it stamp clearly,” Borusa commanded. Tony thrust his hand forward, Rose found her arm rising up on its own accord too, quite unable to stop what was playing out before her eyes. Like a spider on a trapped fly, he pounced, a stamp inexplicably between his fingers and pressed into in the back of Tony's hand. Mission accomplished he made a grandiose swing of his arm upward and broke into a fit of giggles.

Tony screamed as if he had been burnt. “Look, so pretty,” giggled Borusa. “Oh, for shame, most children like a stamp,” he continued as Rose gathered Tony into her arms.

Burosa smiled down at them and Rose looked back into dark, fathomless and ancient eyes. His rheumy eyes, clouded with cataracts, simultaneously filled with triumph and a bottomless need. “Perhaps, it is time for you to go? Hmm?” he said. Rose found herself holding Tony on the sidewalk in front of the shop. Stupefied by the gumminess that the encounter left in her mind and quite sure she had lost the last few minutes of her life in a sticky mass of decay and stale mint. They had been lured in by baubbles and thrust out again into the world having served some dark purpose.

“Wash it off!” Tony cried, furiously scrubbing at his hand. “Get if off, Wose'” he sobbed.

Rose searched trough her school bag and finally found a package of make-up wipes buried deeply in her purse. Outlined on poor Tony's hand was nothing other that the stylized face of Prydon Borusa himself, sunken eyes, prominent teeth and all. Scrub as she might, the stamp did not smear or fade, smirking and smiling like it could not be affected the efforts of a mere girl with an alcohol scrub. Rose had never seen such detail in a stamp, like it was three dimensional and textured on Tony's skin.

“Rose, I don't like it,” Tony sniffed and leaned against her.

“He can bloody well take it off himself,” Rose broke out in a fit of swearing that was not in character with her upbringing because she was well and truly frightened. But, when she looked back at the door of the tiny shop, it was shut up tight as a drum with a post it note saying 'Back in 10 minutes.'

“What a freak!” Rose huffed. “It just needs a good soaking, Tony – with a de-greaser and water and Tony cheered up, though he seemed a bit affected by the encounter as they made their way home. Rose was quiet too, for at the bottom of her very soul she was afraid that no amount of scrubbing would remove the stain of Prydon Burosa.


	3. Chapter 3

After Pete had scampered from his family, Jackie had changed jobs as a stylist at the little kiosk, and after a few short months had been promoted to manager with a meager increase in pay.

This meant evening doing the accounting for the shop, when it didn't interfere in paying customers and the occasional tips they depended upon. Jackie would sit at the kitchen table with the bookwork while Rose working on her progress reports for her student teaching and the stray busy work that Willis found for her like grading music theory worksheets and compiling the end of the year program brochure. Jackie depended on Rose to be her human calculator and help her with the sums when her pocket calculator yielded odd results. Rose discovered she was actually good at maths in college, maturity finally catching up with chronological age, generating a work ethic that made the numbers behave and dance on the paper properly.

It was nice to have the companionship and to share time alone with her mum after Tony went to bed. Late at night, Rose thought that Jackie was looking old and tired, but she was still pretty with her blond hair and striking blue eyes. Rose found it hard to believe that her father would want to live somewhere else, perhaps with someone else. No matter if she was younger and prettier, no one would care for this little family more than Jackie Tyler.

“Oh, Rose, don't be so nice,” Jackie said whenever Rose mentioned this. “Life is better now. We married too young and grew apart. I thought he'd grow to be responsible and he thought that I didn't believe enough in his daft schemes and inventions. We worked to a half way point towards each other and got stuck. Sure I miss 'im, but most the time we lived together I wished he'd just go away.” Jackie made these truth out to be tidy, discrete packages, but Rose knew it was messier than that. The truth existed as tiny fiberglass shards in their lives. Time had reduced the sting, but the itch was a fossil of the original pain.

“He was better at this you know, scheduling and organizing the house,” Jackie recalled once. “He packed your lunches, laid out your clothes so they always matched, even polished your little leather Mary Jane shoes. Used to do the laundry and dishes without being asked, but he was a misery if I asked him to fix anything. He had this long suffering way of going about it, looking up manuals and help guides, prepping the area, laying out tools like he was being crucified or something,” Jackie indulged in a bit of blasphemy. “I must say that he was a devoted father to you, Rose. Shoot him a text, maybe you can get him over for dinner when your graduate. I'll even pay for the train ticket to Cardiff if you want to go over to visit for your summer holiday.”

“Mum, you make is sound so neat and tidy, like your separation was a scheduled event,” Rose groused. Jackie has suggested counseling when Pete left, but Rose despised the notion, sugar coating a event in her life that was distasteful and bitter.

In the kiosk, Jackie was perched on the stool behind the reception desk, reading glasses on her nose. She looked quite professional, even though her clothes were a bit too casual. Most customers didn't expect a keen and clever conversationalist with Jackie Tyler, but she could talk for England and most customers found themselves opening up about their personal lives as she worked with their hair. Every night Rose would ask about her customers and Jackie would regale her with the tale of her day. A good tip was always celebrated, but if sales fell off Jackie would worry and start wondering if she should fix the display window or run a special.

Directly across from the kiosk was a cash advance store wedged in between two competing women's clothing stores, one catering to the petite and the other to the full figured; both heavily poaching each other's business in the simultaneously petite and full figured category. Rose and Tony ignored these usual diversions when they made a bee-line for Jackie's kiosk.

Tony burst into the shop, hand already held out, and shouting for his mother. She only had one customer waiting, a tall man of Southeast Asian descent with a little hair in front, stylishly combed over to hide it's sparsity. He was looking at the hair volumizing product gloomily, not as if buying it would alleviate his problems.

“Mum, look!” Rose pulled Tony's hand to her mother nose. “That busted down little shop on the alley has opened up. There's a nasty man in it and he scared Tony.” Her complaint sounded childish and strident to her ears, but she could not convey the horror of the experience properly.

“I don't like it, this hand wants washed,” Tony complained.

Jackie turned over Tony's hand, trying to catch the stamp under different angles. “My that is clever. Never seen a stamp like that. I do see why it scares you, dear. Sweetie, I'll get onto it when we get home – or your sister will – and we'll have you back to pink little boy soon enough.”

Jackie never had a problem being motherly to her children in public, but she was on the clock until 8:30pm and didn't have time to wash little boy hands.

“You walking or taking the bus?” Jackie asked.

“I'm thinking of walking and getting an ice cream for Tony, might cheer him up,” suggested Rose.

“You know I don't like that place,” Jackie said. “and not with Tony in tow. I swear they smoke in the back room and its never the same employee twice. No – take him home, and I'll try to close up a bit early tonight. How as his day at the nursery?”

“Fine, same warning about the account from Anna Marie. If dad ever hits it big maybe his maintenance checks wouldn’t bounce half the time.” Rose was not particularly happy with her father on this point.

“Don't push it, girl. Fifty percent is better than nothing and I don't have the energy to spare on wishin' 'im luck anymore,” Jackie sighed.

“All right, mum. We're on our way,” she said grabbing Tony's hand. “Don't forget the vinegar packets, the bottle is right out.”

“When have I ever passed on the vinegar. Two orders coming right up when I get home. Best benefit is not having to wash the dishes,” Jackie replied.

Cod Fellows fish shop was right next to the bike shop and Rose already anticipated tonight's meal with the lovely smell of friend potatoes wafting out of the shop. Tony leaned into her leg like a tired dog. Rose was less nervous that it was summer and the bus stop was well lit. The enclosure out in front of their building was fraught with danger on dark days and that little trip often felt depressing.

“I couldn’t do anything about it, Tony,” she said as he was peering at the stamp again. She was addressing him, but it was really an internal monologue she was expressing. “I did get the warning, but did me no good. Just frozen on the spot and I knew it was going to happen the moment I walked out the door this morning,” she admitted out loud.

Rose usually enjoyed the afternoon bus ride more then the morning. She could look out the window and ponder the lives of the people who lived in the townhouses and flats along her route back to the estate. She felt time slow as she let her self bleed out into the world and color the gray pavement with her imagination of a vibrant life. This is what it feels like to be a tree, this is what a brick wall in the sun feels, chasing the electricity around the neon signs, this is the load on the archway above the old church door, all of it she sampled and experience in those few moments, before snapping back into herself.

“Don't rub it! You'll only make it hurt more,” she said to Tony. “I have some pumice soap under the sink, should do the trick.” Tony kept rubbing his hand like he was pulling his very flesh from the bone.

The crisp lines of the stamp seemed to be receding into his hand, visible, but deep and out of reach. Tony collapsed against Rose's side and for a moment of horror she swore she smelled that moldy mint smell of Burosa's shop. A brush of horror as she suddenly looked around the fellow passengers of the bus for his sunken visage.

“There's old Captain,” she said trying to distract Tony by pointing out the old stray dog that hung around the ice cream store.

“He wasn't nice, Wose,” he said. “Not nice at all, was he?”

“Don't think about him!” Laura said, though she couldn't stop that train of thought herself. “If you think about him, you let him scare you.”

Happy to be home, they climbed the six flights of stairs to the flat and Rose laid out the breaded chicken and oven fries on the toaster oven plat for Tony. He was still of an age that he wasn't picked about quality of food, but had a very limited palate as long as it involved catsup. He picked at his food, tolerated his bath and rather surprisingly put himself to bed – quite to the contrary of his habit of asking for a story, a cup of juice and multiple rounds of hugs and kisses. Usually he tried to stay up late on Thursdays, hoping to catch is mother before bed with lots of energetic games involving hiding under the furniture and in the closets. But tonight his was gone for twenty minutes before Rose grew suspicious of the silence and checked on him. He was surrounded in a nest of his Booboo Doggie, favorite blanket, other favorite toys, his stamped hand carefully hidden underneath the pillow. Rose had of course tried to scrub it off again in the bath, but it was part of him now, like a tattoo burrowing deeper into his arm.

“Ugh! What a thought!” Rose said

Rose heard footsteps on the landing about half of eight.

With relief, she hoped her mum was home. Jackie never closed up early, even in the dead of winter. But is was not Jackie, it was their neighbor Colleen looking for Jackie and gushing on about the episode of the The National Lottery she just took in. Suddenly Rose was worried and hurt by Jackie's delay. Maybe the bus died.

Jackie was about an hour late and when she did come home she did not come alone. The balding man from the kiosk, the only customer in the shop, was with her.

“We've a guest,” Jackie said with no ceremony. Rose gave her mum the disapproving look for Jackie looked like the cat that caught the canary. She didn't kick off her shoes, nor collapse on the sofa with her fish and chips. Instead, she produced the newspaper packages and revealed dinner with the flourish of a practiced waitress. “Ta da, I think it's going to be good and greasy tonight, well worth the spots in the morning.”

His name was Jason Ang.

“Jason?” Rose asked expecting something much more exotic and found Jason to be just as disappointing as her shampoo bottle when he answered with an accent more Swansea than New Delhi.

“I'm going to pride myself on being particularly perceptive, but you can't believe in a city this size that it would be a coincidence that I'd find myself in your shop toady. I couldn't believe it when I heard the name,” he said.

“Anna Marie,” Jackie continued.

“Really?” Rose asked.

“Yep, my niece, and my lifeline to a new start here in London,” he beamed at the mention of his niece's name. “Most my family lives up in Neath and have since before WWII. We were the token ethnic minority up there and coming to London I suddenly feel way out of my depth.”

Jackie nodded knowingly, but Rose seemed confused. Jason continued, “being fourth generation already and coming to here, everyone assumes you're right off the boat. It's made finding a job impossible, I should just change my name to something like 'Jason Fangboner'. Make a right mess of it.”

Rose coughed back a chortle, “Fangboner, really?”

Jason quickly replied, “my housekeeper up in Neath was Mrs. Fangboner.”

“She must be Dracula's aunt or sister,” Jackie said.

“I'd think Dracula was a only child. How could you have a housekeeper called Mrs. Fangboner?” Rose asked.

“Must have been desperate at the time, was my late wife's decision,” he responded sadly.

“Just think, there must be a Mr. Fangboner out there somewhere. Though, she might have him stuffed in a coffin in the attic or something.” Jackie suggested.

“I propose a toast to the mystery that is Jason Fangboner! Anyway, Rose, your mother and I got to talking about local job prospects, which led to restaurants, because I've managed a few in my day, which led to dinner. I couldn't talk her into dinner with me, so on the strength of our recent association, she talked me into dinner with you,” Jason elaborated, “and I must say these are good fish and chips.”

“It's a good night, sometimes its hit and miss,” Jackie said.

“I'm the lucky one, tonight. Good company in a new town,” Jason said. “I hope you don't mind the dinner guest, Rose.”

“Oh, heavens no,” said Rose, but she did mind terribly. After he father had scampered, her mum had dated a string of men, but as of late, things had settled down to just her and Tony.  
Dinner having to be shared with a stranger, not because he liked her, but because he liked her mother – Rose recognized the signs – filled her with mixed emotions. Jason was nice enough, but she was obligated to suspect him and protect her mother.

“How's Tony?” Jackie suddenly remembered her youngest. “I feel bad for not asking sooner.”

“Sleeping, but I think he's coming down with something,” Rose replied

“I have a no sickness policy, we can't afford it.” Jackie said firmly.

She gave Rose a familiar glance, asking for a favor that Rose could only gift with her absence. She lingered a little longer, listening to them argue about Eastenders. They had many favorite episodes in common which was another ominous sign and when they disagreed they sounded like the old couple across the hall, criticism married with admiration. Jason Ang nee Fangboner had a lot to answer for.

“Give me a smooch!” Jackie commanded when Rose finally decided to slip away.

“Might be giving, his grace here ideas, mum,” she replied saucily.

“Oh, cheeky,” Jackie said.

“And observant,” Jason agreed.

“See you in mornin', mum,” Rose tried to remain friendly, suddenly realizing at her age she still had no clue how most relationship could alight on such sparse kindling. Well, maybe she did have an idea considering how a man like Jeff Delobel could admire her from a distance. She smiled at them, trying to be sincere before tuning in because, in the end, they didn't need her approval.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jackie gets distracted while Tony gets worse.

Rose's alarm blared at it's usual time the next morning to be quickly followed by her mum peaking a head in her door. “Tony had a bad night,” Jackie commented and Rose was not surprised. A bad night of terrible dreams, no surprise after the fright he had the day before. Yet, Jackie breezed about the flat, like for the first time in months her day held something other than the normal drudgery work and child rearing. Rose was exhausted herself, having spent most of the night working out yesterday's fright for herself and was pleasantly surprised by her mum's organization of breakfast. Full English on a Friday morning was unheard of. Rose was disappointed suddenly by the thought that the treat that was breakfast had nothing to do with being Jackie's beloved child, but was embodied by a burst of optimism inspired by Jason. 

“Like 'im, don't cha? Rose asked, trying to keep the accusation out of her voice. 

“That I do, and I would hope you think he's nice too?” she answered not needing to clarify who they were talking about. 

“He'll do in a pinch,” Rose said. He'd do, but he wasn't necessary, she wanted to add – that inner voice growled – but she managed to keep quiet.

“The comb-over has got to go,” she allowed herself to criticize.

“Can't help he's going bald, but he's got a delightful laugh,” Jackie replied. “That and he can get all serious about being mischievous; has ideas on how to improve every little toy imaginable.” She produced one of Tony's cars now adorned with little plastic wings and grill of metal teeth. “Made that from his smashed insectiod toy, he did.” 

Tony had the whole set. All the the toys came with a code which unlocked computer games on-line, but Jackie had fallen behind on the bills and internet was the first luxury to go. Internet gone, the toys were rendered as so much plastic junk.

“Sides, he likes me, and that counts for a lot in my book, a man of good judgment at least. Anyhow, all that stuff about restaurants was just a line to tell a few jokes and getting to know me. If you have a similar sense of humor, you can get on in most things. It's like knowing someone else who believe there really is a platform 9 ¾ at Kensington,” she sighed almost romantically.

“Could have bought that conditioner,” Rose added carrying her last piece of toast into the room Jackie shared with Tony who sat with lap tray in the bed recovering from his nightmares. Tony was buried in the blankets, sullen and gray, uncommonly quiet and dull when he was normally exuberant. He held both of his hands up, backs to Rose.

“Look at that mum, the stamp wore off overnight.” Rose leaned out the door to get her mother's attention. Jackie had already ramped up her efforts to organize a quick and efficient lift off to their morning, unaware that thing were suddenly heading off track.

“Come on, Rose, finish your toast. Tony, dear, no more lazy bones. Time to shift, this isn't a weekend, Friday waits for no one. Got to live it to get it over with. What stamp?” she asked in conclusion to her tirade. 

“The stamp that wouldn't wash off,” Rose replied jogging Jackie's memory of yesterday.

“The cause of all those nightmares I suspect,” Jackie realized. “He was worrying about that stamp...I thought it was a bug bite. Poor child. Well, it's over and done with. All gone, right?”

“No a chance, mum,” Rose examined the back of Tony's hands. The ever so faint star on the right one and a slightly inflamed, surprisingly unstamped left. “Will you hear me out, mum. Listen for a change?”

“All right, be quick about it!” Jackie said.

Rose presented her story as best she could, all righteous indignation in her mind, spilling out of her mouth sounding weak and unsupported by fact. She almost felt ashamed in the childishness of it all.

“I know you don't believe me, that is is all impossible,” she cried wracked with guilt and desperate that someone understand her.

“I'm sure you feel that way,” she said. “Rose, you are a women grown, you can't have Bad Wolf in the morning and wicked signs the next...your not the superstitious type. I raised you to be grounded in the cold, hard facts. That stamp was quite ugly but you don't have to go scaring Tony about it. Where'd it go if it was so bad?”

“Dissolved right into his blood, I suspect,” Rose replied.

“Hush, Rose. What a thing to say after a night of bad dreams,” Jackie scolded. “Oh, we're running late. Let's move it, loves.”

A few minutes later, Rose watched her mum and brother pull away on the bus. Walking along the sidewalk into the staff entrance she at least knew she could get Steven to cheer her up. Nothing could be worse than yesterday and the day did not approach her with jaws that snap and teeth that gnash. Ordinary day, ordinary thoughts chased by yesterday's memories and nothing was moving in a linear fashion anymore. Jon Carlisle leaned his lanky form against a bank of lockers talking to Christine DeSouza, the dance teacher, someone he was quite entitled to be chatting with. Rose thought that she detected a conversation bordering on flirty banter and his face show more than a casual interest. She tried to confirm this feeling by staring and realized not for the first time that he was incredibly good looking, and pondered for a moment that he was merely toying with Christine – except Rose noted that she was gorgeous with shining black hair, a cute nose and mischievous eyes. Christine chatted with Jon while stroking said hair casually behind her ear. Rose had two hair styles, pony tail and braid, a necessary adjustment to morning showers, little time and cold water. She now discovered that she was jealous of Christine DeSouza and knew that even though her only interactions with Jon Carlisle were the normal limited interactions between a maths teacher and a vocal music student teacher – little to none – in some way she knew that Jon Carlisle was hers because she knew his secret and it was hers to know alone. He lifted his eyes, in agreement, looking directly at her as she walked past, and a cautionary look full of amusement and complexity which was fathomless and infinite in it's duration. 

On Friday, Rose frequently collected Tony from the nursery. It wasn't a late night, but her mum tended to avoid the center on the day when the weekly payments were due. So after lingering after school, helping some of the first altos work through a particularly difficult passage in their madrigal piece, Rose turned up at the childminders and was greeted by the director herself. “We tried calling your mother at work, Rose. Tony is running a temp and can come back until he is well and his fever drops below thirty-eight degrees for twenty-four hours,” the director handing her the dreaded “sick slip” full of red pen writing and a history of his temp for the last two hours. 

Tony sat on a chair, his day bag spilling out on the floor looking at Rose listlessly. Then he stood up and stiffly walked over to her, dropping his Booboo Doggie and asking to be picked up. Rose's eyes filled with tears and he attempted to lift him like he was a baby again, but she could only hold him so long for he was too heavy to carry anymore. The walk to the kiosk was terrible, Tony had to walk most the way and he pitifully dropped his doggie over and over again. Rose struggled with his bag and his lunch and all of her bags while pushing Tony by his shoulders in front of her. In a fit of panic crossing a walkway, she had to pull his listless for out of in front of a car as he came to a dead stop in the road as she trundled on with their packs. For a moment she thought he would cry from the wrenching she gave his arm, but he simply hugged her leg and leaned into her. 

“Poor Tony!” Rose managed to croak out sadly.

They had to pass the tiny shop on the way to the kiosk and she rushed him along, scooping him up into her arms. Fast as she might move she could not avoid the fact that Borusa himself was happily out sweeping the sidewalk. Rose crossed the street to avoid him, buy she was very aware of his regard following them. Even as her slight frame buckled under the load of little boy and bags, he seemed to pop up behind her eyes, an unwanted intrusion to her inner workings. His image was burned into her retinas and she could not purge its predatory glare, like a snake wound around its victim. He occupied that human body, but had no right to it she was sure, her anger flared. The Bad Wolf voice, the one which always whispered to her when something bad was going to happen burst forth with “Vampire! Leech! Demon!” She knew without looking, that he was more alive today, a little less stooped, a little less gray and deathly and for a moment of horror she looked at Tony's state and didn't dare guess to what could be the cause of the change.

Rose was late when she walked into the Kiosk, Kate with blow-drying a clients hair. “Now, stay out of the sun for a bit if you don't want this to go orangey,” she was lecturing, but the man was already grabbing his jacket and heading for the cashier. Jackie spotted Rose, her face lighting up, but not for Rose and Tony, but for more nefarious reasons. 

“Rose, do you have plans, tonight?” she queried. “Would you mind terribly if I went out with Jason on a proper date – dinner with a big band and the like?”

Rose grumbled causing Jackie to snap back, “Don't be such a spoilsport, Rose. It's been forever since I had a proper date and the he's got friends in the band.”

“Mum, just look at Tony!” Rose pushed him forward, a bit guilty for using Tony's illness to hid her discomfiture over Jason. 

“Oh, dear! He looks awful,” she said spying the clock on the wall. “I have another appointment in five, take your brother down the coffee shop and get him a muffin and one of those kid's milk steamers. If you are lucky they'll have the muffins marked half off this late in the afternoon,” she handed Rose a wad of bills.

“Mum, you can't buy me off, I've got this,” Rose handed the bills back. “It's funny how much you loosen up when there is a man and jazz involved,” Rose snarked.

Jackie heard the words but not the tone of voice. “Bless you, Rose, how true,” she said smiling like Rose understood her wishes completely.

Tony quickly consumed his steamer and Rose bought him another heartened by his appetite. She shared his muffin, it was really too large for one little boy and he only ate the cream cheese out of the middle in any event. Time in the coffee shop was always stunted, at least it felt that way to Rose. Something about sitting down with a cup of tea and watching the world go by was supposed to be relaxing, but she felt like time congealed in knots and loss it's use and order by her casual observation. 

Jackie joined them in the tea-room as the barista started stacking chairs on the table hoping to get the floor swept before the college crowd came in for late night studying. Jackie was suddenly of two minds, go out with Jason or take Tony to the doctor, stay home with him or leave him with his sister. Said sister was quite perturbed to find that Jackie had already had lunch with him that day and discussing this between them back and forth, they both found themselves in front of the an unfamiliar doctor at the Health Centre. Their usual doctor didn't work Fridays and the one they got was a little perturbed that they managed to squeak in at the 6pm closing. 

Tony was a bit of a puzzle. “Something is wrong with him, but I can't put my finger on it. He hit his head, got into a chemical or something?” she quizzed.

“He's a healthy boy,” Jackie said, “but he took quite a fright yesterday. He had a terrible night. Is anything wrong with him?”

“I don't think it is anything urgent. A good night's sleep might just fix what ails him,” the doctor said. “He's a bit lethargic, you didn't give him any medication, did you?”

“Not a thing, he didn't need it this morning,” Jackie replied.

The doctor peered again in Tony's eyes. “If he isn't any better in 24 hours bring him in. If he spike a fever beyond 35 or starts vomiting, bring him in. If he complains of a headache, bring him in. In short if anything changes for the worse, come back here or head to A&E. I'll leave a note for morning duty nurse just in case and attach it to Antonio's card.”

Rose always forgot that Tony was short for Antonio a masculization of her mum's favorite Eastenders actress, Antonia Bird. Jackie was actually hoping for another girl, and Antonio would have to do. 

“Do you have to out tonight with Mr. Malaysian Wales?” asked Rose as they sat over a hurried dinner of bean on toast.

“His family is actually three-quarters Welsh, he just ended up with the black hair,” Jackie said defensively as if not being fully assimilated to the culture was a bad thing, “and I'm interested in Jason for Jason, not for his black hair or his nationality.”

“Are you going to call and cancel?” Rose asked.

“No and don't be upset. It's been a year since anyone has shown a bit of interest, you are here, you're an adult and can watch your brother for just one night. When you finish this term and are off on your own, then you can turn me down for a night of babysitting, but at this juncture, young lady, you owe me,” Jackie finished sternly.

“Well enjoy yourself and never mind about us, we should be easy to forget,” Rose said trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice and failing miserably.

“Rose, don't take that tone with me. You've got enough smarts to know that Tony being sick is only a coincidence, the doctor said not to worry, you are going to be here, Rita is right across the hall. You can handle this, dear. I'll leave you the number for the restaurant, call if there is a problem. Don't be mad at me for taking this chance, love,” Jackie finished. 

Jackie won Rose over with reason, but she still felt a certain amount of misgivings and resentment. She tried to stuff her feeling down with an apology and she help her mother into her nicest frock, told her how nice she looked and in spite of her earlier behavior, her voice sounded convincing. 

A few minutes later, when Jason arrived, Rose was surprised by her mum's reluctance, finally saying no to Jason, that she couldn't go because Tony was ill. Rose's arguments hadn't fallen on deaf ears and Jackie's action of one final check on Tony before leaving finally convinced her. She explained to Jason that the evening would be wasted, that she would be constantly checking on Tony and unable to give him her attention. “He's so much worse than I thought he would be,” Jackie apologized. 

Jason was disappointed obviously, but took it in good grace, struggling back into his coat. “I'll give away the tickets, I'll post them on Facebook and have Anna Marie share it to some of her local friends, see if I can get a last minute taker.” He fished for a phone he had hidden in his jacket pocket. 

“I'd pay you for them if I wasn't mortgaged to the hilt for the childminder. I'm am really broke, Rose will testify – I really want to come, see I've even got my best dress on,” Jackie was fighting back tears. 

“You look delightful and I am glad I came early,” Jason said grimly without unnatural flattery hitting the enter button on the phone with a flourish. “See, done and done, no problems.”

“I can offer you a consolation prize, when you come back. Have you ever tried plum wine over ice cream?” Jackie began. “Let me do something to make it up to you.”

“I'll try to think of something on my way to drop off the tickets,” Jason replied. “Anna Marie has lots of friends, someone has to like jazz and be free on a Friday night.”

“Mum, take this opportunity and just go,” Rose suddenly warmed to Jason's sincere disappointment. “I've got Tony managed, he's going to just sleep the evening away. Just leave the number on the fridge and we'll be just fine.”

“Absolutely not, Rose! I won't think if it. Jason is only going to get me with divided loyalties and I won't do that to him.” Jackie said as she left to go change her dress forcing Rose to keep company with Jason. 

“You probably want me to leave anyway,” groused Jason. “Sick child and all, don't me hanging around all sickness. Maybe I call you in a few, when the boy is over the whatever he's got...” he pathetically tried to talk through Jackie's closed door. 

“Leave him alone!” her internal voice growled at her, watching Jason slump onto the couch. His phone chimed and he collected his coat with a resigned look that spoke volumes to Rose. The look that said sayounara , adios, see you never, have a nice life. Rose wasn't going to stand for that and blurted out without thinking, “She's stuck with us, you know?”

“Huh?” Jason was pulled back by the comment, just inches from the door. 

“She can't just drop us at a moment's notice. Tony isn't sick on purpose, you know? Even I wouldn't pull that, and believe you me, I don't want mom dating guys she met on days when things got all spooky for Tony and me.” Rose didn't mean to be rude to him but she was suddenly furious that the happy time she spent with her mum and brother was ending as she finished school and moved on with her life. She was suddenly very guilty for wanting space and to travel and here was Jason so ready to neatly slip into her role in her mum and Tony's life. 

Jason looked thoughtful and took a seat at the dining room table. “I wasn't blaming you, or your brother..and I'm sorry he's sick.” 

“Don't make her sad for not going out and I'll not make her sad for staying in, deal?” Rose asked.

“I really wanted to go out tonight, Rose,” Jason said finally acknowledging her as a person in her own right, rather than the accompanying daughter. “I was just afraid...sick kid you know? Afraid of getting stood up,” he admitted. “I just get so anxious meeting new people and your mother made is so easy for me. I mean, I've struck out so many times since my Anji died, that I'm kind of punch drunk right now that Jackie likes me. Your dad is still around? Jackie admits she hasn't divorced officially, but how long has it been? Tony's got to be at least four, right,” Jason asked, his bout of honesty fueling his bravery. “I mean, I can't measure up, if they are just separated.”

Rose felt compelled to cut him some slack, “They've been on and mostly off again since I was two. Tony is the result of the last 'on-again' and mom can't afford the barrister to get divorced and dad won't do it because of the maintenance situation. Though, I think, he's found someone else.” She couldn't continue, her parent's break up was old news, but hope burned eternal to the child of a broken family. 

At this moment Jackie returned restored to her favorite fuzzy track suit and trainers. “Tony's still asleep, and peaceful, thank goodness,” as Jason's phone chimed a message.

“Ah, I have a taker,” Jason read his message and grabbed his coat. A moment was spent looking between Rose and Jackie before he spoke again. “Jackie, can I grab anything for you while I'm delivering these tickets, I can get us take out and we can cue up a bad movie for the evening.” 

“I'm not choosey, the spicier the better and Rose will never turn down Pad Thai,” Jackie saw him to the door with a smile.

“I'm going to say something and don't take this the wrong way...He's a bit alright if you don't mind the baldness,” Rose grudgingly admitted. 

“Obviously I don't, just look at our father,” Jackie said flatly, “and I'm finally bored with your father's games, pretending he'll come back eventually. Tony starts primary school in the fall and without having to pay the childminder anymore, I'm going to save up to get the attorney for the divorce. It's long overdue.” 

Jason came back in an hour, brown bags full of savory delights. The tickets had found a good home and he shared a package of orange-ginger biscuits which they topped with vanilla ice cream and plum wine. 

At 9pm Rose excused herself to her room to work on her weekly progress report for her student teaching. Tony was ominously silent from his room as Jackie showed Jason her book-keeping homework. “Not an evening entertainment, but it keeps me busy most nights,” Jackie admitted. Eventually they settled on the couch watching reruns of bad American crime dramas. In Jakie's bedroom, Tony cried out.

“I got it,” remarked Rose. “I've been sitting her way too long anyway, my calves are locking up.” She cracked open the door and snuck in. The whole room was filled with a cloying sweetness and she gasped before her nose registered with stink of that musty mint that had been following her for days.

Tony lay listless with his Booboo doggie, his face pulled up in a twisted grin, eye sockets darkened, cheeks hollow, his teeth too big for his face - but his eyes...his eyes were still his own and filled with tears. 

Rose felt pressed down to the floor with the hand of terror. She fell to the edge of Tony's bed, a cold sweat crawling up her spine and a essential tremor starting in her joints. She jangled at the edge of losing control over herself until she eventually came to her senses. Only a few moments had passed, but she felt like something essential in her being had changed again, like suddenly understanding algebra but the equations where written in fear, terror and loathing. 

Tony wept.

“Anything wrong, Rose,” Jackie asked from the couch.

“Nothing's changed, mum,” Rose said. Nothing had changed but only Rose understood what was going on and what was at stake. It was like there was a tone at the edge of her hearing that if she could grasp, she could identify the note, but it was too quiet and she couldn't shut out the rest of the world to chase it's significance.

“Fox gobbled up the gingerbread man,” Tony said weakly from his bed.

“Don't worry, Tony, I'll get that fox.” It might take me sometime, she thought, and he was back asleep in a moment.

Rose joined them in the living room. Jackie and Jason chatted like old friends, instead of like new acquaintances, but time always misbehaved for Rose. Yesterday melted into a lifetime ago in Rose's mind with a flicker of thought. Her first day of school melted into her first day of student teaching melted into vague imagination of a retirement party with a yellow cake. Tony's birth melted into Jon Carlisle's arrival melting into meeting Jason melting into meeting an infant boy (hers?). Pete's leaving melted into Mickey's leaving, melting into Jon Carlisle leaving, melted into Tony ...What? Rose's imagination of the future always involved Tony. The future flickers were always dim, changed over time and Rose was always exhausted by the efforts of drawing them out of her imagination. A best guess at the future, but something fundamental had changed.

“Mum, Tony's settled and Keisha has a standing invite for Friday night coffee. I'm going to pop over to her flat for a few. You don't look as if you'd miss me much,” she said cheekily. 

“Just wake me when you get in,” Jackie replied.

“I haven't seen Keisha in weeks and her brother, Jay, is home from basic training for a few days, so maybe he'll be about. If I meet any game slaves on the street I'll have Jay to protect me.” 

The night was balmy and humid, she still grabbed her blue leather jacket in case it turned cold, but she was not going to Keisha's at all. She'd lied about coffee; she'd lied about Jay being home. She was walking several blocks through the estates to the very heart of Peckham and was at this moment intending to talk to one, Jonathan Carlisle, maths teacher and covert witch.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally we get to meet Jon.

Before the estates, Peckham was a small, quiet, retired village surrounded by fields. The Carlisle Family was a heady mixture of monied names like Camberwell, Bond & Wren, but the fates were not kind to the family. In the Great War many of the Carlisle family died in the trenches of France and what was left of the once prosperous family was finally destroyed in the London Blitz. As the value of the land increased, the taxes increased and the family found their holding shrinking, the men-folk had died in the wars, tenet farmers proved untrustworthy, and developers hounded the widow and her daughter unceasingly. Then the giant public works projects know as the estates came, tuning under the fragile wooden houses and replacing them with giant concrete monstrosities. The cow and the bull were replace with the concrete and the bulldozer and nothing was the same again. 

Their remaining holdings where much of the original orchard up behind Peckham High Street, the very commercial center where Jackie had her kiosk. Built 1798 on the site of the old Peckham manor house, Gallifrey House occupied this corner of the old estate. It was tucked up on a cul-de-sac northeast of the library and on a sunny day in the high summer you could see the leaves of the silver birch and poplar trees on the property stretching over the tops of buildings. 

At night the street lights and neon would catch reflections off the leaves making the entire fringe of the property glow orange, a bright rash over the gray of the city. The glowing hedge was surrounded by a cast iron fence, and behind this barrier lived Jonathan Carlisle, the heir apparent to the old lineage, a dismissive wise-crack always a the ready and a tendency to whitter on about anything and anyone like he was an old acquaintance. Every day at dawn, the gardeners gate would open and Jon Carlisle would emerge, sometimes with a bicycle, more often on foot and in the winters with a bright blue early model Mercedes. 

The old house had a gate and an inscription. Diu Solum which was latin, but not well translated to English, so the locals just called it the Gallifrey house after the first of the family known to have settled there.   
Rose loved to walk at night, looking in the living room windows of the walk up tenements. She could accurately tell the colour of the wall by the size of the television screen. The larger the screen the whiter the walls, the more colourful the walls the smaller the TV or the total absence thereof. She had also noticed the recent trend of under garage being finished with screen door-walls, the need for space outweighing the practicality of owning an automobile in urban London. It was invasive she knew and was one of her guilty pleasures, taking a moment to observe normal family life in her city.

She heard footsteps approaching the corner ahead and ducked behind a car until the figure continued on it's way. The estates and surrounding neighborhoods were relatively safe but just last week a family had been burglarized and she knew the later it got the more likely the game slaves would be out prowling for drunk chavettes to harass. As a student she and her classmates used to make jokes about midnight rapists, but they traveled in packs, watched each others drinks at parties, and made a show of force when a man got too pushy. 

Diu Solum said the gates in a irony voice. The gates where latched, a hook and knob contraption she jiggled before speaking the name of the gate as a charm.

“Diu Solum,” she whispered, the gates coming loose at the invocation, scratching her hand and perhaps taking a small measure of Rose Tyler's skin for the keeping. She opened the stubborn gate only enough to squeeze in and re-latched it. Sticking her abraded finger in her mouth to reduce the sting she walked up the cobblestone drive.

She was accosted the smell of peat moss and pine and eyed the undergrowth nervously for beasts of vine and shrub. Better to be attached with thorns and briars then to be at the mercy of those that prowled the streets outside. The world could be just as savage behind closed doors and it was cold comfort that the shadows brought her tonight. 

The cobblestone drive ended at a carriage house and an archway and brick path led into a garden and presumably to the front door. On the other side of the arch an overgrown garden complete with statuary and fruit trees greeted her like a silent army of soldiers and their mounts. At the center of the garden, arranged upon the corners of the square was the most grotesque set of four angel statues she had ever seen. Their unique horrible faces stared into oblivion, arms outreaching, like mimes about an invisible structure. On the ground inscribed in the brick was a square depressed into the brick and an inscription, again in Latin: tempus et spatium relative percipiat.

Rose was compelled to stare at the grotesques, even walking backwards up the walk, until she tripped upon the stair and startled ascended the steps. The doorway offered a measure of safety and Rose was happy to see the bright blue narrow double door was alight from tiny little windows at the top. There was no knocker and only a tiny Yale lock on the door. Rose knocked boldly, startled by the apparent flimsiness of the outer doors, for she had foolishly walked the streets of London at night on this errand and was not going to buckle to cowardice at the end.

Jon's mother, Penelope Carlisle, opened the doors. She was dressed in a expensive white business suit, pearl earrings and choker, tanned with wrinkled about her eyes, dark hair which had to gone to white on her front fringe.

“Ms. Carlisle,” Rose started, “I apologize for disturbing you so late, but I wonder if Jon – I mean, Jonathan was home so I might have a word with him.”

“Rose Tyler!” gasped Ms. Carlisle, shocking Rose who hadn't expected to be recognized. “Come right in. I'd always hoped to eventually meet you.”

Rose stepped into the entry hall. Its comparatively vast interior was significantly larger than any she had been in. A vast bureau almost entirely covered one wall, its huge drawers filled with various objects. Clocks of all description – mostly mechanical ones – littered various nooks and crannies. Far from the evenly lit, the hall had multiple light sources and an abundance of wooden surfaces, which created a sense of warmth and opulent comfort. Furniture, usually anathema to an entry hall, was found in abundance here. There was a large area immediately adjacent to the door, which had several comfortable chairs, lamps, an ottoman all of which conspired to give the entry the appearance of a cosy living room. Above it all was a painting of the night sky on the entirety of the ceiling.

In the far doorway a figure appeared and for a moment Rose thought it was Jon, but the figure resolved itself into being old Verity Smith, a head taller than Ms. Carlisle and thin as a whisp as she watched Penelope and Rose converse. Rose suddenly knew where Jon got some of his height. 

“This is the library, Jonathan has taken over the running of the estate, but I insist on keeping the household records here rather than let him scamper away to his mess of a apartment,” Ms. Carlisle explained knocking on the pocket door. Rose envied that door, a door to hide behind, privacy and the expectation of courtesy rather than mothers and brothers busting in at all times. 

“What do you need, mother?” asked the voice behind the door – Jon's voice, but without the patience he displayed at school.

“IT,” Penelope emphasized, “is Rose Tyler,” sliding the door open and shocking Rose the the familiarity of which her name had been used. She was not a stranger to this family though she had never met them, solitary in their regard, a unique occurrence in Peckham her inner voice whispered. She was suddenly embarrassed as Jon hurriedly stood to greet here, knocking bills and student quizzes alike off the mahogany desk. She looked past him into the office, real books in the shelves, a two screen computer in the nook on the window ledge, not a cheap school loaner to be had and he was running the SETI screen saver in the background. He also had a blue suede wing back chair, his coat haphazardly splayed across its back and real oil paintings on the wall. In the corner, hung behind a ornate Tiffany lamp, a Frank Lloyd Wright reproduction, and casting intimate shadows on the image was a Reubenesque nude oil painting looking over her shoulder down pillowing thighs and ample belly. Beside the portrait was the mounted skeleton of a cat, yellowed with age and smiling with a feral grin and above it on a shelf a large Vejigante mask painted in black and yellow with white dots and red lips. 

Rose struggled with the complex feelings of envy at items of such rarity and beauty and of living with it day to day. But then she saw the shelf with a complete collection of Star Trek paperback novels, and she felt somehow a winner in the realm of being grown up. A cat push slickly past Rose's ankles and jumped onto Jon's lap where it melted into the black pants he was wearing. Rose noticed almost out of the corner of her eye that this was a different Jon Carlisle from his professional persona. A tight turtle neck sweater emphasized his thinness, the 5 o'clock shadow on his cheek and the singular ring signet ring he wore on his right hand made him deviate from her knowledge of him. When she finally dragged her eyes to his face, she took fright, for in this place, he was magnified, complex, less gentle and no longer a good man. In fact between the darkness of his eyes, his clothes and his stormy visage, he overflowed with blackness. 

He stared at her, taken aback as if she was doing the same thing to him, appearing on his threshold, an invasion desired and feared, an examination of his soul he was ill prepared to make. If it were not for the love of Tony she carried in her heart, Rose would have run from the house. To be frightened by discovering that someone is different, dark and perhaps evil is one thing, to have that affect yourself, to admit that you are feared is another. 

With relief Rose saw that he was disheveled, his left eyebrow was crooked compared to the right, his ear a bit wonky and the thought that this witch being non-symmetrical like anyone else gave her confidence. The cat in his lap began to groom itself noisily, ignoring both her and the man it sat upon. 

“Cross the threshold, Tyler,” he said. “I won't talk to you unless you enter properly.”

Rose suddenly thought of the habits of movie vampires and finding her courage walked down the few steps into the office. At this level she lost the advantage of height and found herself having to look up at him even though he was still more than an arms length away across the desk. 

Jon had recovered from his fear of her, with raised eyebrow and haughty smirk he asked, “What has brought you across Peckham at this hour of the night. A little bit improper for a provisional teacher to be seeking out a fellow employee, in his personal abode in the wee hours, Tyler.”

“Would it be better if I was wearing a school uniform,” Rose asked. “Better or worse?” she asked cheekily. Why he called her by her surname she had never figured out, but the way he said it, ever so lightly rolling the “r” made her think that she really didn't mind. Jon smiled at her answer, perhaps a little pleased with her boldness.

“It's not in William Hanson's book, I'm sure,” he replied. “Heck, outside of Japanese culture...” he didn't elaborate further. “Have a seat, Tyler.”

Rose found a place on the suede chair, feeling a little bit on display for his enjoyment, the skirt she wore for the day catching on the material and riding up her thigh before she was able to pull it back into place. 

She caught his eye. “Skirt's a little bit short for work, don't you think?” he quirked an eyebrow at her discomfiture. “The students have a dress code for a reason you know.”

Penelope slid open the pocket door and set down a plate of digestives and two glasses of ice water with an artful sprig of mint and lime. Rose paused, she did not want to misconstrue his remark and considered cautiously before replying. “Well it's not like I have an income to go out and buy appropriate clothing. My scholarship doesn't even touch living expenses, up until this final term I worked in a shop to pay my way. They didn't exactly hand out free samples. ”

“Jonathan, you're not at school right now,” said his mother.

“I know, and she knows. I was attempting to be subtle, I was looking a her legs. She's got gorgeous legs and I can't say a word about it at school,” Jon answered.

“You don't have to criticize one thing in the hopes that she'll pick up the off-handed comment on the other,” said his mother while Rose hid her embarrassment.

“Forgive Jon on this point Rose, he is not well experienced flirt,” Penelope apologized as if Rose was a dignitary and not to be offended. 

“I can flirt with the best of them, Tyler,” Jon replied. “She is just upset that I was direct and didn't engage in mindless polite topics like the weather and your health before diving right into what interested me.” He spoke in his lilting voice that scampered around topics, dusting them off, addressing a few interesting points and dropping them without a second thought when something else caught his interest. “I refuse to participate in polite conversation – 'How's your mum? How's Steven treating you? Do you have a post-graduate plan? Any leads on jobs? Flat-mates lined up? Seeing anyone in particular? Watch the last episode of Eastenders or are you interested in Game of Thrones?' ...all that boring chatter” Suddenly pulling his regard directly on her, he recovered the previous train of thought, “Mother finds 'gorgeous' to be a sexually aggressive word, but it is true and being inclined toward the female gender, I think my opinion caries more weight in this instance.”   
“Jonathan!” Penelope admonished quietly, perhaps embarrassed, but not overt in her chastisement of him. Rose suddenly found herself the shuttlecock in a very aggressive game of badminton between the glares of two people she really knew nothing about. 

“Mother, it is late, find something else to do. I find it very difficult to have a normal conversation with a women nearer my own age with you participating. I won't scare the girl, nor will I harm her,” he said losing the staring contest with his mother.

“I've noticed nothing normal about this conversation so far Jon,” his mother replied dryly. “Nothing like being shown the door in your own house. Next time you entertain, make sure you do so in your own space and keep us out of it.” 

“It was nice to meet you Rose, don't let him talk you into anything,” she left the comment hanging and both Penelope and Jon leveled assessing looks at her, like the priests in ancient rights appraising the quality of the virgin sacrifice. 

Rose suddenly felt like she was drowning a tide beyond the safety of shore and well out of her depth. “I won't,” she croaked. Perhaps coming here was a mistake and her last lifeline of safety closed the door and slipped away.

Jon's gaze was suddenly suffocating, close and private, like the glances they had been exchanging since the beginning of the term with laden with meaning and power given over each other. She knew with clarity that he knew more about her then just the shape of her calves. “What do you want?” he asked without preamble.

As direct as he was in his questioning of her, she suddenly lost the courage to be direct with him. She looked at the skeleton, and the oil painting whose very nakedness made her self-conscious. The painting represented hours of work with a willing model and the intent was to tantalize. Tucked into the corner of the frame was a snapshot, but Rose could not make out the image and was cautious not to look too closely.  
“Do you like it? The painting I mean, not the cat,” he asked. 

“I'm not the intended audience am I?” was her answer. “It's almost voyeuristic in intent, like peeking across the the other flats in the estate to try to catch someone in their knickers.” 

“An interesting hobby if you have to have one,” he said. “Relatively harmless as long as you don't get caught.” 

Rose wrestled with his idea of a hobby for a moment before continuing, “Looking too long at this painting seems to give one permission to look at other people in the same way. People who ...wouldn't want to looked at,” she ended in a rush. Jonathan looked the painting for a bit longer, before studying Rose. 

“That is artistic expression, is it not?” he said after a moment's consideration. He continued in the tone of voice that implied an oncoming lecture, “Surgery is much the same. All of your innards and most private parts pinned out and labeled and people do not complain that is it artistic. You are well read, aren't you? Unless the liberal arts education in the public colleges are just words and empty promises. Do you really think this is such thing as privacy anymore? Better yet, tell my why you are here.”

“Who owns the bones?” Rose diverted his attention. 

“Verity's 2nd husband, my step-grandfather was a veterinarian. I've inherited it. The cat's name was 'Uncle Quences' but I've not found the meaning of the name. I suspect that you listed to the rumors well enough to know that for the exception of my genetics, I am a new addition to House Carlisle,” he paused for affect. “Tyler, you cannot have ventured here in the middle of the night just to talk about oil paintings and mounted cat skeletons.”

“No,” she agreed walking over and looking at the bookcase. “Why all the Trek novels, have you read them all?”

“Some many times over, I read them for the escape. There's not much flashy and interesting in being a planet bound physics teacher, you know.” He crossed his arms in front of himself, joining her at the bookshelf. “Give it up, Tyler, why are you here?”

“Simply, I need help. And I think – you are a witch, aren't you?”

Jon's face was wiped clean suddenly, as if every thought had left his mind at her accusation, but underneath she could sense a simmering anger, irrational and undirected. Suddenly she know she had lost her case, that he'd be no help, but her need was so great. She furtively glances at the cat, at the painting, at the tiny photograph which she reached towards examining. Jon intercepted her, snatching her outstretched arm. 

“What do you want?” adding “I might make a love potion for your bloke, but I will not end a pregnancy if you mess up your contraceptives.” 

Rose felt her cheeks flush as much from the implication of sex as from embarrassment. “It's nothing of the sort and you know it.”

“How would I? You won't tell. All I know is that you've come to consult a witch.”

“It's my brother, ok?” she finally admitted. Jon was suddenly abashed and just as quickly angry again.

“Your brother!” he steamed. “You came all the way here on a Friday night....wait, how did you get here?”

“Walked,” she retorted.

“With those game slaves on every corner down on the high street intersection? You were just begging to get jumped. What were you thinking?” he asked.

“Well, I was careful and I didn't...How else could I have gotten here? I can't afford a cab. Things happening like that are rarer than you think.”

“All it takes is once, Rose,” his sudden switch to her proper name took her off guard. “So, you came here about your brother. Do tell...”

“He's ill,” she said.

“What the hell? Take him to a real medical professional and don't mess with the local witch doctor, I'll exact revenge on your sworn enemy, cast warts and hair loss, blow the shingles off his house...” His hand raised and a wind actually ruffled the pages of his physics text, very noticeable in such a small room. “Sour the milk, spook the cat, give the dog seizures...right up my alley, that.”

Rose knew that his pride was hurt and didn't understand why.

“His illness, a doctor won't fix. He's sicker than they can explain.” she said.

Jon still had a hold of her arm and he pulled her towards the door. “You know too much, you should be more careful. I could ask terrible things of you in exchange for my help,” he raised his free hand to almost caress her cheek before catching himself short. “Get a bloody doctor, the government pays for them. I'll see you out.”

“Jonathan?” called a voice. “How does Rose take her tea?”

“Not now she won't! She's on her way out,” said Jon. “For the last three months we've watched each other in the hallways, across the cafeteria, and at the threshold every morning and I thought she visit because... well, never mind why, but all she thinks is that I'm a bloody witch doctor who could cure the common cold for free.”

“Jonathan, language please!” said old Verity entering the hallway in her black dressing gown and looking every inch the stereotypical witch. 

“Even better, lets que up Monty Python and go through the whole 'She's a Witch' sketch. I'll find the duck and the barrel of water. If she weights the same as a duck... she's made of wood! And therefore...a witch!” he intoned in a ridiculous voice. 

Verity ignored him, “how far do you have to go, dear?”

“I'll walk back,” Rose replied, not unthankful for the concern.

“She lives at the Powell Estates,” Jon replied crossly. “I'll drive her home in the car. Of course with traffic these days, it might be more risky. You never know your luck.” 

His anger had left him and he was now curious again. But Rose's anger was flaring, their temperaments asymmetrical. 

“You assume that I show up on your door step on a Friday night because I fancied you?” she was indignant, but suddenly ashamed of her jealousy towards Ms. DeSouza. \

“Why not?” he asked. “I am a bit foxy...”

“Don't let him start!” his grandmother jumped in. “Bring the car around to the gate. Rose is not walking home alone at this time of night.”

“I walked here just fine,” she protested. “At lease my existence in a mundane little flat in the bad part of town is real, Jonathan Carlisle, not hiding behind a iron fence in this monument to lost times.”  
She knew she was being rude to the entire family, but she was working into a state of mind which disregarded social niceties in favor of emotional expedience. 

“I don't do domestics, Tyler,” Jon said. “I've lived a real life and it is overrated.”

“And shove your wand where the sun don't shine!” Rose retorted with a growl.

“Fine!” stammered Jon, finally and truly shocked at her anger. He paused at the doorway, turned half way with deliver another cleaver retort and at the last second perhaps thought better of it. 

“Come have some tea, Rose,” said Verity. “He'll be a while, he has to walk over to the garage where we keep the car parked.” 

“Rose followed them into what would have been the large estate's kitchen. A small nook which might have been in the servants dining area was laid out with a modest evening repast. There was something off-putting about the women's kindnesses in the light of her recent insults to a member of their family. Then she shivered her nerves finally exhausted as she realized how late the evening waned and how tired she was. They gave her green tea – the good type not squeezed from the cheapest variety of bulk filter bags at Tesco. Indeed her saucer had a genuine slice of lemon, and it was half finished and a pair of salted cucumber sandwiches consumed before she realized it. They anxiously watched her, an unspoken need passed between their glances. 

Rose was curious, whatever could they need from her? She came to find help for Tony. Either way, maybe she could entreat their help. As much as Jon hid his odd nature behind mania and the endless gob, these two actually hid away from the world. But she could see that even they too hid their natures behind masks of propriety and manners. “What did you need of Jon, Rose?” asked Verity.

She felt as if this was not their true interest. The problem of Tony was not their concern, her interest in Jon was. “An illness, my brother...he's so sick,” she started, but Penelope interrupted. 

“Give him some time, Rose,” she said. “He can be difficult in many respects, but it is not his fault, but mine, that those difficulties exist.” 

“He's not a bad man, a bit of a renegade, yes, but not a bad man,” Verity chimed in. Rose took another sandwich, her nerves relaxing a bit more, though she wasn't really hungry.

“It's my fault, we were talking around each other and couldn't land on common subject. It isn't how I expected a conversion would go, he is really different at school,” Rose finally caught up enough with her thoughts to reply.

“I expect he would be, he's playing a role there. A favor was called in and he is fulfilling his part. He's talked about you. You recognized him straight off, and it took him by surprise” Penelope supplied helpfully.

“I thought he was a witch,” Rose said. “That the best word I have for it.”

“Well that has some very feminine overtones and he resents it. Hates the label no matter how it fits. Sometimes he thinks his talent makes him less the man and he fights it. But it is in our very nature. However, his real issues lie somewhere else.” Rose suddenly felt their need of her like a pull, she was calm yet concerned that whatever then wanted from her she could not deliver.

“He assumed that I came to see him because I liked him...in that way,” she spluttered. “Not that I don't,” she added a bit to hastily. “I'm not the type to show up in a man's doorstep looking for an invitation.”

“Well, maybe not now, but someday...?” Verity proposed.

Rose was momentarily horrified that they would think that of her. She looked at the last bit of cucumber in her hand, having eaten it without even noticing. Suddenly the feeling of being pulled into these lady's orbit was complete, she was a party to their quest without knowing the end goal. Deciding that if they had her ensnared she would ask them about Tony, she steeled herself to ask for their help, when Jon returned in a black leather jacket and jeans. 

“I'm not willing to waste the petrol on such a short jaunt. Come on, Princess, your carriage awaits,” he handed her a motorcycle helmet, his own tucked neatly under his arm, “and I as your loyal footman will assist you,” he opened the kitchen door with a flourish to present a bright blue Vespa purring in the driveway. 

Rose was delighted, and he jumped on the Vespa with a well-practiced ease and patted the back saddle in invitation. 

“We'll talk again, Rose,” said Verity please with herself. “You've taken the right of hospitality and we gave you our bread and salt. That means much to us.”

“You didn't?” he glared at them. “Oh, Rose what sense do you have? Successfully guarding your modesty walking down the rough streets of Peckham and then being taken in by a pair of little old ladies with posh accents and middle class upbringings. Hop up, nothing to be done for it now. Hang on to the frame or to me if you'd prefer.”

They zoomed away into the night, the ride was quick and Rose was grateful for it because the moon was now hidden and the air smelled of rain. As difficult as her life was, his seemed to be easy, money, a job he really didn't seem to need, that he was doing as a favor to someone for Penelope. She was ashamed at her jealousy of it.

He pulled up to Powell house, having not asked her for directions even once. “Rose, so finally tell me, what is wrong with your brother?”

“He's dying,” she said, “not that you care.”

“Rubbish, to the dying part and if it bothers you this much, I care, not that I've ever met your brother. He get his vaccinations? I hear there are measles outbreaks all over now.”

“It's a vampire,” she continued and he laughed at the notion.

“This isn't some small town in Washington State, you've been reading those rubbish novels,” he accused.

“Give me some credit for taste, I finished the first one and wanted to throttle Bella and do the world a favor. I cannot abide a professional victim.” He had obviously hit a sore spot and it amused him to no end that on this at least they agreed. “It's not quite the sparkly variety of vampire, more like a demon, possessing spirit or incubus.”

“Make a choice, Tyler, which one is it?” he said with derision.

“How would I know?” said Rose, “and that's pretty amusing considering I knew what you were right off, eh?”

She handed him her helmet and marched away to the stairwell, alighting the stairs two at a time as was her habit. 

“Wait a second, Tyler!” he shouted up the stair at her, but she ignored him and pulled open the steel door to her apartment, shutting out Jon Carlisle and his little Vespa. She could no longer deal with him, he was so different than is school persona and she needed to work through her feelings about it first. 

Jackie and Chris were waiting up for her at the tiny dinette table. She would have sworn this innocent diorama was hasilty arranged. 

“How Tony?” she asked.

“Sleeping it off, I hope,” said Jackie. “He's been very quiet.”

Rose thought she knew better. She had been gone a lot longer than the few minutes, and their being up implied a certain change in their relationship that she did not want to consider. It would have been hard to miss the sound of the Vespa in the courtyard, but it seems they hadn't noticed at all.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Complete setting and sequence rewrite here if you are at any way familiar with the work it is based upon. What is normal medical procedure in early 1980's New Zeeland is barbaric by today's standards.

“Rose! ROSE!” Jackie yelled from her bedroom. “ROSE!” again and then Rose immediately awake and terrified found herself drawn to Jackie's room, sleep deprived, eyes crummy, head pounding and slightly dizzy. She stumbled into Jackie's room and into a nightmare. The room was saturated in that spoiled mint miasma, the smell she now labeled as belonging to Prydon Borusa. Tony lay on top of the bed sheets, eyes rolled up into his head, body shaking in convulsions that would seize him up and release in quick succession. He drummed the mattress with his hands and ankles, his teeth grinding and covered with white foam.

“My poor boy is dying. Oh God! I've got to call 999, don't leave him,” she directed.

But Jackie could not pull herself from away from Tony and Rose stumbled into the flat looking for a cell phone. She found her phone in the bowl by the door, dead as a doornail, because she didn't think to put it on the charger the night before. She looked for her mother's phone and found it in a similar situation, but she quickly plugged it into the wall, hoping for enough residual charge to make the call. 

Finally Tony stopped seizing and collapsed in heap, but not before making one bone shaking cry which scared Rose to her core. She leaned as close to the tiny kitchen window as she could to make the 999 call, eye back on her mother's room in deadly concern. Cell reception in the flat was spotty as best and with a dead phone she didn't have the luxury of running up to the roof for better signal. 

Rose finally got through, their location information automatically routing an ambulance dispatch. Five year old boy with seizures, no prior history, recent trip to A&E for lethargy, no recent exposure to chemical...and the questions went on and on. Jackie sat with Tony, who had soften and fell into a deep sleep from with he could not be roused. “He looks so worn like those little kids with Progeria,” Jackie remarked when Rose returned from making the call, she'd seen the segments on the morning talk-shows. “Oh, what is wrong with him, to make him shrink from life like this?”

“I don't know, well I do know, but I don't know how it works,” cried Rose, tears in her eyes as the helplessness she felt. 

Jackie sat on the edge of the bed, bright pink robe, white slippers, both worn and tattered and both well loved. Rose could remember the last time her dad lived with them, those had been his presents, and she would cherish her memories of catching them hugging in the kitchen, Pete stroking Jackies blonde tresses on a Sunday morning before coffee and breakfast. It didn't last and fell once more to the rows and the arguments, but from one moment Rose witnessed the hint of a happy ending she craved. 

“You're going to lay this at the feet of that toy salesman, aren't you?” Jackie accused.

“He's very will to live is being drained and something is doing it,” Rose defended herself.

“Oh for Pete's sake!” Jackie retorted violently. “Don't give me any of your Harry Potter Dementor rubbish. Don't make me question your sanity when I need you so much.” She rubbed her eyes and implored Rose silently to give her the support she really needed.

“It's true. You won't acknowledge it, cause it is too fantastic, but it's true. That smell, the minty smell of sick, that's him, Prydon Borusa, and Tony, he's got that rictus grin. I know it, he's ensorceled,” Rose insisted.

“Stop playing, Rose,” Jackie said. “I'd believe anything you tell me if it would lead to a solution. But this rubbish idea of a vampire, honestly Rose, I'd expect that sort of magical thinking from Tony, not you,” Jackie groused. 

The emergency personnel came, loaded poor Tony into the bus, and showed Rose and Jackie benchs to ride along. “Can you afford a private hospital, ma'am?” the driver asked, assuming she already knew what the answer was going to be. 

Jackie looked sadly around. “No, not really...Oh, but his father certainly can. I at least got that part squared away in the maintenance agreement.” At this point Tony had another seizure, arching and twisting but without the vigor of before, a tiny drop of blood emerging from his nostril as he finally settled. They backed away to let the emergency personnel do their work, holding on for dear life as the bus sputter to life and they raced to the hospital. 

Hours later, they where both emotionally exhausted and no closer to a solution. “I have no clue what is wrong with the boy, the CAT scan was clear, his blood work comes up a little anemic, but otherwise fine. I'll have bacterial and some of the rarer genetic panels tomorrow morning. I'm admitting him and moving you over to Dr. Caldera, she's be best in pediatric neurology,” the intake A&E physician informed them. 

“Stay with him, Rose, I have to run home and get his pyjamas, his Booboo Doggie and a few other toys. That, and I have to call your father and I can't be in this room with him all hooked up to these monitors to be strong enough to have that conversation,” Jackie grabbed her purse and dropped a kiss into Rose's hairline before leaving.

Rose was suddenly along with Tony for the first time in hours, all the attending doctors and nurses stored away in their niches. Hospital were desperate places for Rose, she had memories of the few days Mickey's gran hung on after her head injury and her own grandad Pretice and his slow decay from lung cancer. Tony was still, his red hair limp and lifeless against a dry forehead. His lips where purple and if she had to guess at the texture of his skin she would label it as dried out peach. He had wrinkles around his eyes as if he was shut up tight against the outside world and she knew that he was in there fighting for his life. 

“Tony,” she whispered, “It's Wose.” He stayed tight in his little cocoon. Rose picked up his limp hand and forced herself to warm it, though it was cold as she would supposed a corpse would be. She laid a single kiss to his cheek, but he stirred not. 

Rose wandered down to the family lounge and found herself a cup of hospital tea, made awful by styrofoam and artificial sweetener. She peaked out the window, four floors up and spotted a blue Vespa chained to the bike rack and for a brief moment her hopes soared before crashing down to the reality that there was no way the Jon Carslise would know she was here. 

She walked back down to take up her seat next to Tony. “Morning, Tyler,” he whispered behind her. “I'm here to apologize.” His helmet was tucked neatly beneath his arm, the black leather jacket was open to reveal a thin burgundy jumper that didn't leave any chest definition to the imagination and brought out the chocolate in his eyes while emphasizing the smattering of freckles on his cheek. 

“What do you want?” She knew she sounded like a petulant child, but he was looking past her into the room looking for specters and like he was listening for unseen voices. 

“Your mum about?” he asked. “I mean, she does exist? Though nothing wrong if she didn't and this was some elaborate ruse....oh, never mind,” he tugged on his earlobe as he babbled. 

“She's trying to collect Tony's things, they've admitted him for observation,” she replied.

“Works for me! I'll be on my best behavior, not rude, promise not to flirt...much,” he chirped in his outside world banter, last nights severity and anger apparently evaporated with the mid-day sun. “I'm good with mothers, you know. Come on Tyler, introduce me properly,” the last was a statement with a hint of question. 

“Fine, but be quiet,” she stopped before Tony's closed door.

“So who is the patient here, Tyler?” he asked as his eyes wandered lower on her slight frame. Rose suddenly remembered the confusion of her morning and the fuzzy bottoms with polar bears she was wearing. It would only have been worse if she was shoeless and braless, but she had remedied those deficiencies before heading for the hospital. 

“Not my best pair of pyjamas, no. I save the black silk ones for special occasions,” she attempted a bit of a flirt.

“I'm not a special occasion?” he responded a little shocked at her forwardness after last night's anger, “but don't go changing on account of me. So tell me again, why am I here?

Rose stepped aside and let Jon into the room. “Doctor has been by, they are waiting on his labs. But you and I know it won't do no good. Mum's made at me for even suggesting it...”

“I swear I can believe in impossible things, I wrote the book even, a Journal of Impossible Things,” Jon said. “Skipped breakfast this morning just to leave room for them. So, Tyler, any experience in writing hypothesis? How much science you have in your compulsory classes?”

“A bit, but I'm not too sure what you are leading at?” she responded.

“A hypothesis is an statement of correlation between two or more things,” Jon had adopted his best lecturing tone of voice. “You can never fully prove a hypothesis, but you can disprove it. What we want to formulate here is a null hypothesis, where we exclude all other outside influences and are left with a measure of what's left. Let me see the boy and I'll start excluding,” he approached the curtain enclosure where Tony was secreted away, “and before your mother shows up and wonders why you are cavorting with older men in your sleepwear.”

“You think you're so impressive,” she teased him.

“I am so impressive,” he sounded a little bit offended. “It's my job as newest member of my household, those ladies at home they can real....Good gods, Tyler!” he pulled the curtain around Tony back, “that smell...it's bloody awful.” Rose could have kissed him at the moment because he could smell the rotting mint too, but she plugged her nose and looked on at Tony a bit. 

“You clever girl, you! You were right on and I was so wrong about you.” Rose released the breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. Jon plopped down on the leatherette chair. “Spill! Tell me the rest of the story,” he leaned in, inspecting the back of Tony's hands and slightly pinching the flesh of his arm to see how quickly the color restored.

“Vampire, incubus, spirit,” he intoned. “Whatever talent you have in spotting the more fringe elements drifting about this world was spot on in this regard. Did this man have a tattoo or scar on his forehead?”

“Nothing that I could see,” Rose said with conviction. “He really had no hair left to speak of and what his did have was so thin, I would have seen it.” Jon mulled over her response and discarded a few more possible causes. He lifted Tony's eyelids, one then the other, sighed and shook his head.

“Ever hear of a Fendahl, Rose?”

“Plants?” Rose said.

“No Fendahl, not fennel. It is basically a wicked spirit that is so determined to live on after its allotted time that it steals the life force of others to prolong its own existence. I don't think your Prydon Burosa is a vampire, he's more likely one of those.” He looked at Tony as if he where some sort of museum exhibit. “The truth is...” he paused, growing silent. “Rose your grown up enough to understand loss, but he's not going to make it.”

“You mean, he is going to die?” Rose whispered, her voice thin and almost occurring outside of herself. 

“He's hiding inside of himself,” Jon said in a cold, clinical way. “Even if I had visited him last night, there's nothing I could have done. This is beyond mother even.” Rose took a sudden chill wanting desperately to be with Tony under those blankets. 

“You believe that? That he is beyond hope?” she asked.

“Hidden away,” he tried to sound reasoned, as if it were a foregone conclusion. “Hiding will help for a while, I suspect. Perhaps like a medically induced coma – aestivation really...”

“Spare me the lecture,” she stared him down for he had resumed his lecturing tone. “How long then?”

Jon shrugged. “Not long under this sort of consumption.”

Rose looked up at him and met his gaze, his brown eyes deep and fathomless under her scrutiny. 

“You're upset, Rose?” he asked carefully.

“He is a wonderful little boy, a little boy I love like my own, and you ask me if I'm upset. You talk about him dying like you don't give a shit about it.”

“I used to have brothers,” Jon said. “I suspect none of them think about me now and I don't know how I'd react if one of them died. I'm kind of numb to the whole domestic thing, me. I suppose I'm hidden away in here somewhere too,” he tapped his chest, “a different brand of hiding and a long time ago. But we haven't explored all avenues open to us and the one that is looking the most promising involves asking old Verity. She knows everything there is to know. Just know that you are more informed then you were this morning and ….well, you're not alone in this anymore. You have the Carlisle witches on your side.”

He spoke truth and the assurances he offered settled into her bones. She took a deep breath and noticed that Jon was no longer watching her face but admiring the rise and fall of her chest underneath her old pyjama top. Caught out, he flushed furiously, hand flying to the back of his neck to scratch the short hairs of his nape. 

“I never bothered to tell you my price for this assistance. You sought me out, Tyler, and I'm a bit of a mixed blessing,” Jon resumed his observation of her breathing habits.

“I'm paying you in exhaled carbon dioxide, then,” she volleyed back at him.

“Is that your condition? Because I am certain to think of many situations where I'd like to have prolonged exposure,” he purred. “Invite me in Rose. Means a lot to a witch, a proper invitation. That Fendahl could only mark your brother's hand if it was offered. These little crazy rituals carry a whole lot of meaning just like the plan I'm formulating. He marked your brother, and you are going to mark him. Command him to take his mark off through a mark of your own. Easy-peasy.”

“Could I actually do that?” she asked.

“Nah, that'd take a witch,” he said, “and he wouldn't let one get anywhere near him, let alone present his paw for stamping. However, let's see what Verity has to say on the subject before we commit to anything.”

“Let me text my mum to bring me a change of clothes,” she said. 

“Can I get you a cup of coffee or something,” Jon suggested. “Don't tell me how to get there, I have a fantastic sense of direction and a nose for coffee. Some may even suggest that it's witchcraft!”

“It's that on-demand liquid based stuff, not better than freeze dried instant stuff my dad used to drink when I was a kid,” she tried to act the hostess to no avail.

“Bleh, might as well drink bleach,” he groused and ducked out the door in search of the offending substance.

Rose settled down next to Tony to compose her text message and her mother took this opportunity to reappear laden with a small duffel bag and Tony's school satchel. “Oh drat, mum, I hoped to catch you so's you can bring me some real clothes.” 

Jackie tossed the duffel in Rose's direction, “Already sorted, Love,” as Jason Ang stepped in the room behind her. Rose noted his presence and calculated the speed at which Jackie had run her errands had probably resulted from Jason's assistance and she couldn't help but be grateful. 

Jon reappeared suddenly with two cups of coffee and Rose swore she saw the air bend around him as he ducked his free hand behind his back to quickly produce a pot of purple violets. Jackie made a fuss over them, not yet connecting the dots between the handsome stranger and her daughter. Rose knew he made those flowers appear and it was only further proof of his hidden nature.

“I'll be here more the day, Jason. Whatever can be wrong with him?” she eyed Jon as he lingered, not some hospital delivery boy nor staff.

“They'll figure him out,” said Jason.

“Rose, your going to have to fend for yourself until Tony get's better. I might be awhile,” Jackie settled into the bedside chair. “They're bringing me a special rooming-in chair so I can stay with him. You have bus fare to get back?”

“I'll take Rose home, Mrs. Tyler,” Jon suggested. “I'll even get her a proper meal on the way, stop by my mother's and take advantage of her habit of baking bread on Saturdays.”

Rose made her goodbyes to Jackie and Tony. Walking out that door with Jon was difficult because the remaining picture of Jason, her mother and Tony look like such a perfect happy little family, that she suddenly felt very left out as the adult daughter. Her mum's ready acceptance of Jason's help and failure to even question Jon's attendance on such an intimate moment continued to disturb her.

“Tremble, Tyler, for now you are in my power,” he addressed her with an eyebrow waggle. 

She was reduced to a fit of giggles, trying to hide her smile behind her hand as she walked down the hallway. “Whoopee,” she mocked him.

He frowned at her for a moment, “Well then, I'll have to consult my library of science fiction novels to come up with something suitably interesting to have you trembling in my clutches. Some of those awful Robert Heilein novels should do the trick.”

“Hey, wait a sec. How'd you know where to find me? I mean, private hospital and all,” she finally thought to ask.

“Don't go accusing me of behaving like a barrister, but I might have come by this morning to apologize and I might have chased the ambulance here,” he unlocked his Vespa and handed her the spare helmet. “I decided not to bother you during the intake process, but I might have snuck around the hospital and convinced a few nurses that ...I was your boyfriend,” he finished in a rush. 

“We'll spin by that shop and take a quick look, a sneaky peak perhaps,” they sped off on the Vespa, “and let's get some more things for you. Verity's workings usually take days and she'll need your presence as a tie to Tony. Do me the favor of bringing your silky jammies,” she could almost hear the wink in his voice. Later, laden with a small bag of belongings, she rode behind him, arms around his slim waist, but her mind was back in that hospital room. Her life had taken a turn for the surreal and suddenly she felt no more that a puppet, with a voice and actions coming from with out of herself.


	7. Chapter 7

“It must have been a horrible experience for you and your mother, having to call an ambulance. It was right of Jon to bring you by, you shouldn't be alone with Burosa about,” said Ms. Carlisle. “Jonathan did behave himself, I hope?”

“He was fine, a gentleman, most of the time,” Rose answered, “but kind of alien too. He acted as if something had gone wrong with the telly rather than my brother. But then we swung by the Peckham Street shops and looked at the storefront. It was closed, and Jon said is was sealed and a warded whatever that means. He said the Burosa must be a cautious and ancient creature and that he has no clue how I could get him to take the stamp off Tony.”

“Well, that's our realm,” said old Verity. “We are not powerless, you know … We are the children of time. But enough of that for now.”

They were on sunny enclosed porch with slate floors and hand-woven rush mats. Each window featured a stained glass scene so detailed as to lend the feeling that each was a window to another world. One on her left was a futuristic city with sky cars and a field of green grass, the other a bloated sun being consumed by what she assumed was a black hole, another scene was a giant wave of ice and in the next window a smoking and broken dome surrounded by an orange sky with two suns, the mountains red and silver in the distance. The portraits on the interior walls where a little more disturbing. A giant head, gray of skin with wispy tendrils watched the room with melancholy detachment from its frame. The picture of what appeared to be a feline nun stared at her, but weather it was an elaborate painting or a women in a cat mask eluded Rose. She wanted to look at the many elaborate things in the room, but courtesy to her hostesses made her too reluctant to stare as openly as she would have liked.

“I hope Jonathan was a least pleasant company,” his mother said. “We cannot assume his good behavior, but I should say that it is not exactly his fault. I am to blame for his erratic behavior, I'm afraid.” She wore an orange wrap dress with red fringe, much like the petals of a tiger lily which set off her graying hair and brown eyes. It made Rose immediately think of Jackie who could not have worn the dress without showing an inch of cleavage the first time she moved.

“Before the estates came, this entire area was small houses,” said old Mrs. Smith. “It was a mistake to become too fond of our old neighborhood. We loved it here, every house had a fence and a garden. You could smell the clean laundry hanging from the lines. It was all ours as children, with secret paths between gate and garden – a world of cricket matches in the alley way, snow angels and playing in the corner hydrants on hot summer days. Life was simpler then, the people who lived in Peckham owned their houses and although they were poor they had pride.” She sighed.

“It started in other sections of the city first, the new name was gentrification, but in eras past we called it progress and modernization,” Penelope said. “We could see it on the horizon, property values climbed, more households could not keep on the maintenance because the property taxes were taking a larger and larger portion of their income. An army of developers gobble up the highlands and anything near the public spaces and left the lowlands and houses nearest the rail yard to rot. Then the government came in and laid claim there. We loved our little village too much, but it wasn't our to control. It grew here, it died here and now has been gobbled up by the concrete monster which is Greater London.”

“The bulldozers, earth-movers and cranes laid seige to Peckham you see,” said Verity. “My second husband was from an old family, closer to one of us – a lord of time perhaps in an earlier age. He was not strong, more like you perhaps, just sensitive. Now my first husband's family had none of the talent and they held the property with me in common. We were warned, Penolope and I, that they were maneuvering the estate holdings against us.” 

“So the barristers arrived,” Penelope chimed in, talking in sequence with Verity. “Then, one day the earth-movers arrived on our own back alley. Charming little Totter's Lane is now imposing Totter's Lane Parking Garage. That was already years ago...”

“More than forty by my recollection,” Verity added.

“I was very socially active back then, supporting all sorts of local causes,” Penelope said with a self appreciating smile. “I thought the whole world was my little corner of Peckham and everything from Greater London was to be distrusted. The traffic noise and smog had become so oppressive then that mother and I thought we had to try something.”

“We decided that we would try to create what you'd call an induction barrier over the remains of our holdings,” Verity related. “You could see and interact with the area, but you couldn't change it. They would pass us by, our little neighborhood of modest houses intact. Such a barrier is hard to create and harder still to maintain. We needed a third witch”  
Penelope leaned over and looked into Rose's eyes.

“We need three to manipulate space and time.”

“I was already an old woman,” Verity said.

“So it fell to me to provide the daughter we needed to do the working.” Penelope leaned back again. “I assumed I'd have a daughter. In centuries of recorded history of our family, the first born child has always been a daughter – never a son. The entirety of my pregnancy, I spoke as if I expected a girl – promising her a home and hearth – but as you can guess, I was carrying a boy.”

“Jon?” asked Rose. 

“I had suspected the babe was not gifted when Penelope couldn't hear the baby's dreams. The birth was difficult and she was told not to attempt to have another and to be truthful, once he was born, we didn't want him. He's named after his step-grandfather,” Verity said. “He never had children of his own and took to him immediately. So, the two of them took up residence in the carriage house and we tolerated the evidence of our failure, big Jon and little Jon.” 

“Wouldn't he have worked,” Rose asked. “He's a witch like you, isn't he?” 

A flash of emotion covered Verity's features. She was simultaneously stunned at Rose's bold observation and embarrassed of her past actions based on her poor assumptions. 

“We had not a clue of his nature in his childhood. Perhaps boy children develop the signs later, however it was not just that mistake but another. We were so certain of ourselves and so wrong at the same time,” said Verity. “I underestimated my spouse, he had made certain … provisions for Jon.”

Rose knew that they had come the true beginning of Jon's story and she was eager for their confidence if only to explain the enigma which had rushed into her life. 

“It's mine to tell...” said Verity with a sigh. “I let it happen.”

“No it's mine, I could have stopped it at any time by taking my place as his mother” Penelope turned to her. “Rose, I am not a parent in any sense of the word. The boy was a trap to me. I watched him grow to a toddler, loved and coddled by his grandfather and I thought I was doing best by him.

“He became a little boy and knew nothing of us in the main house, the arrangement had strained our marriage almost to the breaking point,” added Verity. “And when big Jon passed, little Jon was only three and a half. He was devastated and we were not equipped for dealing with a grieving child who was a stranger to us.” 

“Then the lawyers came, the Peckham Shops were built right at the bottom of our hill, the orchards ripped up by the roots for the traffic circle right in the middle. I cannot hide how self centered I was at that time. I didn't want to find a nanny for the boy, so I ...” Penelope couldn't finish.

“We decided to have him adopted,” Verity finished for her. “My late husband had planned on sending him to Prydonian Academy when he was old enough. We found a family for him near the Academy, paid his tuition years in advance. He had a stay-at-home mother, who baked her own bread, canned her own foods, sewed and gardened. A father who was kind and dependable and a three older boys to be his brothers. They loved children and wanted more, but could not and had decided to adopt.” 

“I also made allowances for hobbies, paid extra for piano, art and dance, all things I find to be a comfort. I promised also to never try to contact the boy, I didn't want him to be confused,” Penelope added. 

“His academy education would start when he was eight, my husband saw to that, and in the end it made no difference how we set him out into the world, he was a witch at heart and all other influences be damned in comparison,” Verity said.

“Every once in a while I would wonder if I had been right, sending him away to a family that would love him more than we could, and after a while I forgot about him. The estates were built, my attorneys took their fees and moved onto more lucrative clients, then one morning about thirteen years ago, I went to get in my car in the carriage house and found Jonathan in the front seat. He looked so much like Verity that I recognized him instantly. He was in a horrible state. If you think him thin now, he was frightful then. His clothes were ragged, his shoes worn through and he was filthy. I could see broken fingers, incorrectly set, lacerations on his back and arms and he was incoherent falling in and out of lucidity. He didn't know me, he didn't know himself and I realized that the young man before me was what I had desired in the first place, a true scion of our house, a witch and lord of time.” She shook her head ruefully, shared with Verity for a moment her disappointment in their short sightedness.

“How did he find his way home?” asked Rose, “You sent him away when he was little.” 

“He frightened us, how that after all those years he could find us. He was still tied to use you see,” Penelope said. “We he needed to find a safe place he ran back to Diu Solum like a trained pigeon. The sheer strength of will necessary to make the trip in his state from Farmingham back to Peckham was evidence of his power, and we feared that if he had gone bad, there would be no way to hide from him.”

“We patched him up as best we could, resetting the mangled fingers while he was sedated,” Verity continued. “What we couldn't patch is his soul, his very humanity was threatened. We were in danger from him, you see. Rose, you can imagine, a witch of his power, with his particular talents with time and absolutely no training in cause and effect, can make huge mistakes, rend the very fabric of space-time and drive himself insane with the erasure of his memories. We took him to the best therapists who patched over the holes in his soul. He has a very good public personae when he needs it, but it is of no surprise that he considers your brother to be a broken bit of machinery. He is very much still broken himself, and I don't know how much recovery has occurred in the last thirteen years. He seems to be taken by surprise by strong emotions and shoves them down very deeply covering over them with his cleverness.”

“Too clever by far, and a bit tricksie,” said Rose. “So what went wrong, was it his family or the Academy or something else?”

“All of the above, I'm afraid,” Penelope said. “I've tried to let you in on some of the thoughts about the decisions we've made and I feel that any authority that I may have exerted as a parent is lessened by the fact that we have grown very fond of the man that he has become. I really can't tell you what he feels, he buries it so deeply, we try to read between the lines in the things he leaves unsaid.” She looked at Rose and lost some of her confidence. “When he started to talked about Willis' student teacher, you, we thought that just maybe something had broken loose inside of him when you recognized him for what he is.”

“We cannot verify this, of course. He is his normal, emotionally stunted self,” Verity added. “I would guard myself if I were you. He might pour on the charm, try to seduce you, but consider it all an interesting experiment in human behavior,” Verity warned.

Rose had applied herself to her studies these last few years, she was not going to squander the scholarships she had worked so hard to earn. Her experiences with men were so far in her past and so emotionally unsatisfying that she was occasionally surprised that her huddled form in jeans, hoodie and childish braids could attract a man's eye. So it was with well practiced trepidation that she turned over what she had learned and was suddenly hit with the thought that perhaps they were afraid for Jon because of her.

“Never mind his issues for now,” she said suddenly. “He can flirt all he wants, but until Tony is out of that hospital, I know what my priorities are.”

“I better shift then, we'll talk about your brother more after dinner,” Verity drew herself away from the table. “Will you fetch Jon from the carriage house, Rose? We'll have dinner served in about ten minutes.”

Rose let herself out the back door and followed the flagstone path back to the carriage house. She had been left to wander the grounds earlier and she had noticed many beautiful things – the blue glass bowl on the slate inlaid table by the back door filled with interesting colored rocks. An huge overgrown metal fountain, it's black depths unmarred by even a single ripple and the words absque schisma carved into it's base. She approached the door of the carriage house and knocked, but he did not answer. She knocked once again before trying the handle and walking up the narrow staircase to the apartment above.   
The top of the landing was yet another door, narrow and doubled like the front door of the estate, with eight tiny windows on the top, some frosted, some clear, and having come this far into his domain uninvited, she boldly opened this door too. With a charming and audible squeak of the hinges, she entered his realm. From Verity's warning she expected the flayed skins of fantastic animals or perhaps bubbling beakers, but all she spied was a pile of papers to be graded and a basket of laundry. Rose looked at the papers, all the sixth form advanced maths to be graded, something she did not miss as a choral teacher. She looked along the nearest wall and was surprised by floor to ceiling bookshelves filled with reference books of all types. Behind the door, Rose saw a mini-lab full of rocketry parts, fuses, fuel packs and various well trimmed parts. Rose had seen some of the rocketry demonstrations the sixth forms had put on in the spring and recognized Jon's hand in the making.

Beyond the work area was a picture of a woman on canvas, her white face, white hair and red rimmed red eyes stared at her. Another painting of the women from the study, this time her face was visible, her reddish curls, common face and finally a hint of her age in the wrinkles on her neck. She smiled at Rose, not as a seductress but as an ally. Rose noticed a digital picture frame on the corner table, every thirty seconds or so switching to another pastoral scene until it caught her eye and she could have sworn it was a picture of herself, hair wet as was her normal early morning state. Then is changed to yet another picture, this time in the cafeteria with Willis followed by a picture of Jon and his sixth form kids and their rockets. 

Jonathon was seated on a settee in the corner, partially obscured by a large chiffonrobe, observing her darkly. He was framed by his surroundings, his wild hair and heavy rimmed glasses in opposition to his pale complexion. 

“If you had read Spock's World,” he said, “you would recognize my expression as stoicism betrayed by emotional sentimentality. I'm trying to ignore the affect you are having, being in my personal chambers, but failing quite spectacularly.” 

Rose did not comment

“Well?” he asked.

“I don't think stoic is your style,” she said, nor did she think that snapping a picture of her unawares and displaying it was particularly polite either. He unfolded his lanky form and quickly closed the distance between them. Well within her personal bubble he looked past her to the digital frame. She was caught between him and the corner and he brushed past her upper arm to retrieve the photos.

“It's not particularly good,” he said. “I was fumbling about with my phone and had the camera set to selfie mode. I nearly missed you.”

“You should have asked me,” she said. “I don't bite and I wouldn't have minded.”

“I have a fear of rejection,” he said, and Rose couldn't tell if his discomfiture was self-directed or due to her proximity. Rose froze in place, suddenly feeling very much like the snake charmer who's lost her will to the beauty of the snake. At that moment Jon glowed in his power, his eyes dark, his nostrils flaring with each breath.

She yearned for his kiss. She enticed it along secret pathways between them, a connection of the future that was at this moment dormant and thin as spider silk. She tried to open this pathway, to bend him to her will, but he seemed to resist her, instead drawing a fine strand of her hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear, drawing his long finger down the shell without once taking his eyes from her face. Rose melted into the gesture, and the moment he lost contact with her, his expression changed again like quicksliver, softening toward her and losing the menace as he was surprised by his own behavior. 

“Let me in, Rose,” he stepped further into her space, a hair's breath between them. His breath was cool against her forehead as he looked down into her brown eyes. She raised her head to look at him, perhaps a bit defiant in her stance but at that moment her mobile rang it's trill of watery notes. 

“Ah, saved by the mobile,” he stepped back.

“Mobile saved you too, mister,” she teased him back as she fished the phone out of her pocket. “Ah, it's mum, overprotective parenting via telepathy at its finest.” 

“I'll let you have your privacy,” he stepped out of the room.

She was suddenly alone again in his space, her mother's tinny voice coming out of the mobile. For a second she could smell the bleached linens and cleaners of the hospital across the miles.

“How are you Rose?” Jackie asked.

“Full to the brisket with home made bread and preserves. I swear the little old ladies are fattening my up,” said Rose. “Any change?”

“Test came back negative for meningitis and a half a dozen other things,” Jackie rattle off from memory. She sounded tired and was careful with her words. “They still have no clue what is wrong,” she continued. “I'd been meaning to ask why Jonathan Carlisle was at the hospital.” 

“I ran into him last night, he gave me a lift home on his scooter. He swung by to retrieve his helmet this morning,” she lied smoothly, “and saw the ambulance leaving. Guess his curiosity got the better of him.”

“Oh well, the violets are lovely, makes the room a little cheerier, nothing for us to do but sit around,” said Jackie.

“Us?” queried Rose with a suddenly juvenile jealousy. “Why is Jason still there?” 

“I really don't know why. He won't leave. I mean we didn't plan it this way. Rose, I'm staying here tonight, so don't expect me home,” she said.

“I'll come there and spend with you tonight,” Rose said. “We can be there for him together just like at home.”

“Rose, you'd get no sleep in that hard chair, you should go crash with Shareen so you won't be alone, or Keisha,” Jackie said. “I also need you do a favor for me, you need to call your father. It's time he knew Tony was sick. Sick enough that....” she couldn't finished a choked back a sob.

Rose felt a sudden stab of long buried sadness which froze her in place while she processed the long dormant feelings of abandonment. Years after the fact, it still snuck up on her and she was angry at herself for succumbing to a bout of childish emotion. Jon popped his head through the door, gesturing that dinner was done.

Rose's mood took a turn for the dark, “Might cheer dad up not to have to make a support payment anymore.”

“Dammit, Rose, that is not funny,” Jackie almost yelled through the phone. “Don't let your disappointment for your father poison your thoughts. I need you Rose and you and Tony are every bit as much alike your father as you are me. 

“Rose, I'll take care of your dad. I just hoped you'd like a chance to reconnect,” Jackie sighed on the other end of the line. “I'll call you in the morning and let you know if anything has changed and maybe we can have a better conversation when I've had my rest. I love you, don't forget it.”

“Love you too, mum!” Rose cried. “Give Tony a hug for me.”

“No change?” Jon asked from the doorway.

“I probably have to stay in the flat alone tonight. That's hasn't happened in my living memory,” Rose replied.

“Penelope and Verity will put you up in the main house, if you want company. They'd be delighted to have you,” Jonathan offered, “and I'd be more than happy to play the gallant host.”

“You are different here, than at work,” Rose suggested.

“True that,” Jon replied. “I feel more confident here, a little bit foxy, sexy, emotional....like my thoughts are more coherent. The further way I get, the more scattered, the more I babble and natter on, never arriving at my destination. I am told it makes me a brilliant teacher, but it make lesson planning a nightmare. Dinner?”

Rose startled at the sudden question, wondering what brought on the request for a proper date, before somewhat disappointingly realizing he was talking about the meal that awaited them in the main house.  
The meal that awaited them was set out upon the patio overlooking the gardens. Salad, thinly slice grilled beef with a burgundy sauce, proper salad with mixed greens and flaky buttered rolls. The smell enticed her to sit and partake even though the repast of bread they had when she arrived was enough to dull her hunger. She felt awful realizing that her mum was surviving on hospital food when she had such a nice dinner laid before her.

“Jon, help Rose to her chair,” said Verity, the upper class breeding showing through. “I have considered your brother's predicament and we have some ideas.” 

“It's alright Jon, I can seat myself,” Rose said in annoyance. Such manors where so unfamiliar to Rose as to be almost alien. She viewed good manners as a trick, a way to get on a girls good side used by the same men who expected sex on the first date and marital obedience.

“In my time, such courtesy was expected of young men and I am ashamed that it has become so abused,” his grandmother said. “Now, Rose – one on one I might be a match for your Mr. Borusa, but I have no leverage over him concerning your brother without having a direct vulnerability to exploit. Jonathan is right in thinking that we have to mark him in the same way he marked your brother in order to get that point of entry, but that will be next to impossible for us to accomplish.”

“Think a bit of the voodoo cults of the Caribbean, a little bit of the victim's hair and a poppet and the target is controlled, sucked dry and rendered a shambling husk. Prydon Burosa's mark is a similar thing, a gateway into your brother's vitality. He is aware of us and our kind's power and would never willingly offer his hand to any of us, including Jon here.” 

“Mum says the doctors have no explaination for what is wrong with Tony,” Rose said.

“There would be no risk to yourself, if you were like us...a witch,” Verity slyly suggested.

“You want to let her look into the untempered schism?” 

“What else?” replied Verity.

“It could make her go mad,” said Jon.

“Definitely not,” Verity snapped back. “She's on the cusp of it already, can't you feel it?” She addressed Rose. “You are a life long resident of Peckham, a child of Peckham residents, who are the children of Peckham residents. I suspect that if you go far enough back, that very few, if any, of your family have ever left London proper for any length of time. You are soaked in the 'void stuff' that permeates this area. We can prepare you properly and let you look into the depths. You will come out changed and be of our condition, able to make minuet manipulations in time and space. And once on the other side, if you can mark Mr. Burosa, then you could – how did you put that Jon?”

“Reverse his polarity,” Jon concluded.

“He's just evil, do you mean I'd somehow turn him good?” Rose asked.

“Nah, he'd just burst, wouldn't be able to hold together if you put your mark on him. The longer he keeps stealing from others to maintain himself the more tenuous his grip on this reality. He should have passed on long ago,” Jon said. 

Rose sat among the ordinary dirty dishes of their shared meal, around a very normal wood table, on a seat that was a bit wobbly and the cushion a bit lumpy and she was suddenly struck with the very thought that she was the most ordinary thing alive sitting at a table of witches. “Wait, won't he be able to tell if I was a witch too? I mean Burosa.”

“But you are not a witch now, you were not a witch when he met you,” Verity said. “Memory is a very solid thing to his type. Take Jon with you, he is very powerful and will outshine you just by being present. And for heaven's sake don't accidentally brush into him before you do the deed or the jig will be up. You are going to have to trick him, to offer him something he very much wants...anything to get a bare patch of skin exposed. Once you do that, have Jon set away far enough that he can see you for what you've become.”

“Then I come back here and you change me back?” she asked.

“Rose, don't consider it!” Jon was suddenly ashen. “You'd lose yourself in the schism without the protections that being our kind offers.”

“You seem like a normal family to me,” she said. “Other than the inkling that I had that something was different, you have jobs, houses with carpets and curtains, mortgages like the rest of us. What does a witch do? I mean, what am I signing up for?”

“Rose, we exist in four dimensions more fully than others. It's the prolonged exposure to the schism which did it. A small rift in time, right here on the estate. We've been here for generations soaking in it. If we move about, we tend to come home, perhaps to refuel. We exist in linear time, but we are not bound by it. If I can move say....a pot of violets,” he stood up and walked to a cart full of houseplants, “in three dimensions,” he move the pot of violets to their table. “Then I can, as a witch, move it also in the fourth dimension...time.” He swung the pot of violets around to his back and was suddenly empty handed. “See, instant get well soon gift, delivered to my prior self at Tony's bedside and...paradox averted.”

Jon looked suddenly weary and took a long draw on his glass of water before popping another buttered roll in his mouth. “There is a price, you see,” said Penelope. “He's going to sleep hard tonight pulling a cheap trick like that. Show off. We can do long workings and not exhaust ourselves, influence traffic, repel land developers and hid ourselves in plain sight. Luckily he knew that violet was here to be moved, otherwise we are reaching blindly.” Jon rolled his wrist and suddenly was holding a banana. 

“Where is that from?” asked Rose.

“The future somewhere,” he replied as he cheekily pealed it and bit in. “I'll make it work some when.”

“It's your headache in the morning, Jon,” said Verity. “Moving something like that through time and space is exhausting and not for impressing girls.”

“First thing he managed to apperate was a banana, seems to have an affinity for them,” said Penolope with a hint of maternal pride.

“Well, that's after you had me wasting an entire week trying to summon a pear. I hate pears,” Jon snarked back, but it wasn't long before his activities caught up with him and he was nodding off in his chair. 

Due to the late hour, Rose was offered a guest room in the main house, which she willingly accepted. It overlook the front gardens with the frozen angel statuary and silver trees. She pondered what was the least few days of her teaching semester and a career that would most likely take her from Londen looking over the twinkling lights and sounds of traffic that was Peckham. She locked the door, turned down the handmade quilt on the bed and tried to reassert herself as Rose Tyler, daughter of Jackie, a simple normal human girl. Not a sensitive, not a near witch, just Rose, and embraced in her will of simplicity she quieted her mind enough to fall asleep.

“Tyler!” Jon's voice whispered from the side of her bed. She sat bolt upright, stifling a scream on the edge of the quilt.

“Hush, sorry, don't be scared!” he whispered.

“Why are you here?” she demanded.

“It's just...Don't let those two old birds talk you into anything. They think of their advantage only. They need a third, a young women, for the working they want to do. Don't let them tie you to this place like we are tied. Only change if you are absolutely sure you are willing to do it to save your brother. Stare her down and insist on an alternative. She'll give you one if it's available, but you have to hold eye contact with her,” he urgently whispered.

“Do you dislike it so much, being a witch?” she asked.

“No, it was what I was born to, but it might take a while for you to adjust to the idea that you are no longer normal. It's a bit lonely,” he replied.  
Listening to his voice so close and intimate in the darkness reminded her of the caress they had shared down in the study. She was emboldened to reach out to touch his face in the darkness. 

“Did you come in the window? I bolted the door,” she said. His face smiled under her hand.

“I'd be a poor son, if I couldn't sneak in and out of my mother's house for some property skulduggery.” His hand came and caressed down her bare shoulder. 

“I think if this is your recruiting tool for the Esteemed Order of Carlisle Witches, that this may constitute sexual harassment.” 

“If this is harassment...” he captured her hand in his and started kissing the back of her knuckles, “...remind me to skip the next PD day on it and just practice on you.”

“I cry foul,” she weekly protested.

“I don't think you really mind,” he started with fine kisses along her wrist and up her arm. “Anyway, these things take time to savor. You do understand the concept of foreplay, do you not?” Jon purred in a seductive voice.

“Foreplay is for women's magazines in my experience, limited though it may be,” Rose embarrassingly admitted. “Not much experience in that department.”

“I can give references,” Jon stated. “I've danced.”

“Anyone I know, I mean ...DeSouza?” Rose asked.

“No, not here. Actually I married at eighteen, it lasted all of three weeks before she left for greener pastures. Mother spent a considerable sum having it annulled. Still don't know if I was the bad guy in that story, she ended up well, married to a politician named Saxon,” Jon said.

The ardor had gone out of his seduction at sharing such intimate details of his life. “It was good while it lasted, I guess. I've always wondered if,” he paused, “...well if things might be enhanced, that certain things may go together well. Here, let me show you something,” his hand gently touched her temple. “Just think of something pleasant.”

“Not there!” she was about to say, when he exclaimed “gotcha,” as if catching a wayward helium balloon. 

“Time can be captured on film, and for the witch it can be recaptured from a thought,” he said. “Here you go Tyler, sweet dreams.”

Rose sunk into the dream, a child of three sitting on a bridge of a small creek, throwing sticks and twigs in the water and watching her father run down stream to collect more for her entertainment.

The next morning she awoke to the sound of Sunday morning church bells and traffic. The early morning sun pouring through the window of the old house, but no one was about. The rattle of the Vespa drew her out to the carriage house.

“Coffee?” he offered her a mug, like this was an old worn morning ritual between them. 

“What's wrong with the bike?” she asked sipping the bitter brew. “I'm going to need to get home today, and I'd rather not walk considering the heat already.”

“Give me a mo to get cleaned up and I'll take you home and check the results of my tinkering with the bike,” he hurried off into the carriage house.

Rose waited on the curb of the cobblestone drive and realized for all of his seductive nature last night, that she was not afraid of him, nor of what whatever they had between them was developing into. She donned the helmet with practiced ease and hopped on the bike and they rattled down the cobblestone streets towards the estate. 

Rose and Jon alighted the stairs, he took them two at a time and they were just coming around the corner of the landing, when Rose's door opened and Jason Ang stepped out in Jackie's bathrobe to grab the morning paper, Jackie's voice pouring out of the apartment. 

“Damn!” muttered Jon and he tried to push Rose back down the stair well. “Let's ride the bike down to the Thames, it's still acting up.”   
But he was too late, Rose made eye contact with Jason and Jason choked out a “Rose?”

“Rose, they're adults, it might not mean much,” Jon offered helpfully.

“Lets get out of here,Now!” she ended a little shriller then she intended, the tears already threatening to spill out of her eyes.


	8. Chapter 8

“I suppose it was to make herself feel a bit of normality. I mean, can't be that bad, if she slept with Jason. They seemed to be heading that way anyhow,” Jon said. 

“Tony is in the hospital, and she's cavorting with a strange men,” Rose's hurt was evident in her voice.

“He's not going to be worse for your mother having a night in with Jason,” Jon tried to reason.

“How can you be so heartless,” Rose accused. “You just don't get it, things were good with the three of us and just when it starts going to shit, she finds a replacement.”

“That's not fair and you know it, Rose,” Jon snapped at her. 

The weather had turned warm for the last Sunday of May, personal issues not withstanding Rose was not looking forward to the week ahead with fractious students in hot classroom. They were walking on a path to the ornamental garden in the Peckham Rye Park and Commons. The northern field was filled with carnival workers setting up rides, games and attractions for next week's fair. 

“Just try to forget about it,” Jon tried again.

“Never,” Rose tried to hold strong, but her resolved was weakening in the face of her mother's potential happiness.

“Your life will move on without her eventually. Saturday mornings with beans on toast and day trips to the park will be replaced by your own adult life. You're graduating in three weeks?” his question was more rhetorical. “You're going to move on, I can't imagine you wanting to stay in that tiny flat when there is a whole world to explore. Your mum, she's going to move on too and Jason doesn't seem too bad a bloke so far.” 

They came to the entryway of the formal Sexby Garden, a tiny little sign greeted them MAINTAINED BY THE FRIENDS OF THE PECKHAM RYE PARK. They had started with Japanese garden while Rose was still too mad to speak. Jon left her alone with her thoughts for awhile just enjoying the company. Rose was basking the warm air, a temperature so perfect, and breeze so slight she wished she could float away and never have to deal with her hurt feelings again.

“Not on my watch, Tyler,” Jon interrupted her moment of bliss, reading her thoughts almost right through their clasped hands. “Time takes us along with it and we can fight it or go with it, change happens, Rose. Let's rest a moment, look at the leaves in the trees. Won't be the same set of leaves next year or even tomorrow,” he leaned against a trunk, the brown of his jacket blending in with the bark.

“Easy for you to say,” Rose retorted sharply.

“Hey, I'm trying to be sensitive to your feelings on this, but don't beat yourself up over it. I've schooled myself in stoicism, serves me well in situations like this. Can't get hurt if you don't let yourself get inundated by the emotion. Take a step back and stop suffering for a mo,” Jon tried to explain, but his body language betrayed the brave face he was putting on his emotional detachment.

“I'm not going all emo over this,” Rose answered with resentment.

They sat down under an apple tree in the sweet grass. He was gallant and removed his overcoat for them to sit on. They both reclined, enjoying the breeze and watching the starlings kite in the sky overhead. 

“I've got experience with this,” he said. “I've known my family...what ten years? Spent eight of that avoiding them by going to college. I think the entire reason I stuck around for a double PhD was to avoid them. My mother sent me off when I was barely able to talk. She tell you that, yet? Strangers are her confessional in that regard.”

“I don't blame them,” Jon added. “It would have worked out brilliantly, if ….well it wasn't her fault, we can't read the time-lines too accurately when a family member is involved.” 

“So, something bad happened?” Rose asked allowing the diversion.

“I went bad,” said Jon. “I could sense things they couldn't. My world had more parts, more hatches to open and tinker with. I could force a daffodil to bloom in January, keep a tomato fresh on the window sill for weeks, and if I concentrated hard enough, keep the rain away. I could read any language given enough time, find any object I'd seen before by tracing it's time line from when I last saw it. Not exactly witchcraft, just good old object reading, but it filled my family with unease. Eventually, my two older brothers moved away and that just left me and my brother, Harry.” 

“Father lost his job, during the recession due that banking crisis in the States. I must have been about twelve. They told him that it was due to downsizing, but he must of pissed someone off there, because no one else was cut. He found employment, but it never paid as well, and he was older with a bad knee and somehow that was my fault.”

“How could it be your fault?” Rose asked.

“Not to hard to make that leap,” Jon confirmed. “Making another a scapegoat for your own misfortune or bad choices, comes naturally to some. He was scared.”

“He was also dependent on the check that Penelope sent every month for my maintenance. I don't mean to make them sound petty. She paid well, basically kept us afloat for the last few years. Things just got twisted in his mind. He knew I was adopted, and I strongly suspected it being the only brunette in the family. Didn't like my eyes, was annoyed by my ambidexterity, furious that I could calculate numbers in my head, and my mum favored me something fierce in those years, always trying to fatten me up,” Jon smile at the memory fondly.

“Dad took to drinking. He'd get soused after every payday and then he'd spend Sunday in church repenting. Our Sundays where all about repenting. Part of my repenting was to stay silent, no talking. If I talked, I didn't get food. And it is in my very nature it to talk, so I got very thin that year. Then I got used to the silence because I wanted the food. I stopped talking at school, my grades plummeted, I got peculiar to them and they sent around a welfare agent,” Jon chuckled sadly. “Dad went off the deep end then. He thought they'd take the maintenance money, and not long after that he lost his job again. He was just looking for an excuse at that point and Mom's death from cervical finally did us in as a family.”

“The day we came home from her funeral...I guess mum was keeping him under control. He'd say 'the whole system was corrupt, filled with Godless men and whores and all the money was with rich bitches in ivory towers who dumped their bastard children on God fearing men'. He started reading from Revelations and mentioned Penelope by name and when he was done,” Jon said, “This nose isn't crooked on accident, tore the musculature above my left eye, ripped the ear on the same side and broke my wrist so bad, I've had to have it reset twice. He was five stone heavier than me and I was just a twig of a kid.”

Rose was frightened at his revelation, his voice, while cheerful, had a dreadful undertone. She took his wrist in hand and examined the tiny surgical scars. She could see the flesh discolor underneath her gaze, a window to his prior condition and she was horrified when she looked at his face, purple with fresh bruises, eye bloodshot, hair matted. She didn't know if he was aware of his transformation or if was unaware as his emotion swelled around them.

“I could have killed him then. I was in no condition to fight back and I was scared and broken. This man was my father, in my head. He locked me in the basement at this point. I couldn't go to school the way he left me, although I begged to be let out. I swore I wouldn't tell anyone, that I'd say I fell down the stairs. It was more cellar than basement, I couldn't stand to my full height. It had a dirt floor and stone walls, wasn't a bed or a bathroom, just some empty crates.”

“What happened then?” Rose asked.

“He came down to feed me in a couple of days, brought Harry with him and a wash basin because he accused me of smelling up the house above. Harry was very upset and they started arguing. Trouble is that I don't remember much after that. I woke up in Penelope's car seat and spent they next week in the hospital.” 

“Your father couldn't have been a very nice man to start with,” said Rose.

“Life got to be black and white to him, good versus evil, and if he was good, then the rest of us, if we didn't follow his will to the letter, were evil. I've had time to ponder this, that my father was severely depressed and his abuse of us was an outlet. Once he started....I'll never know if perhaps he was abused as a child.”

“They didn't put him on trial?” Rose asked.

“They wanted to put Harry on trial and ended up dismissing the charges. Penelope paid for the attorney. My hospital intake records were enough to get him cleared of the the murder charge along with his own injuries. They say Harry hit him over the head with a shovel when he attempted to drown me in the wash tub. I don't remember a thing, nor how I got to Gallifrey Manor. Mother got me, beaten to a pulp, quite out of my mind and it is then she realized that I was everything she had needed me to be, a few years too late and quite male.” 

“Truth,” Rose said.

“Quite male, I assure you,” Jon's gaze bored into her.

“Down boy,” Rose smacked his arm.

“Ok, ok, just being assertive,” he said. 

“Verity ended up taking me all the way to Cardiff to see a specialist. An old druid who also happened to be a competent psychotherapist. Family counseling for all three of us,” Jon chuckled. “This women was awesome, and my first real hot-blooded crush on an older woman.”

“You had a crush on your psychotherapist?” Rose asked, doubt edging her voice.

“Terribly,” Jon replied. “Tried to impress her for years, older woman and all. Got my life in order and just when I think I might have a shot, she marries a younger man who looks like a twelve year old in tweed. Moral is, you can get over anything or anyone. I did.”

“You are a filthy liar, sir,” Rose rebuked.

“Ok, I admit that I still may carry a torch for Dr. Song, but a beautiful women is a great motivator,” Jon said. “Pushed my way through college, spent a few years studying overseas, traveled when I could, somehow got qualified to teach secondary maths on a lark for Penelope's old student. Might take up teaching properly if things continue to go well and look, who I meet, bright fresh music teacher with one foot in my world already. If that's not getting over things, I don't want to jeopardize this time line.”

“I know you don't want to hear this Rose,” he continued, “but wish your mother luck with her new romance. It isn't fair, but I've been through hell, Rose. Fie on it all,” he opened his arms and the starlings in the sky and froze for a moment before shooting off like a dart as a flock into the darkening sky. “What else isn't fair? Harry is stuck in some treatment facility right now, making clay pots, all because he doesn't have the resources that Penelope can draw upon to get me right in the head again. I sit here with a beautiful women, in an authentic Victorian garden, a tribute to what money can buy. I'm fooling them all into thinking I'm normal when I'm not. Emotionally stunted, me.”

Rose twirled a few blades of grass between her fingertips, her fury towards her mother replaced by an aching sadness at what Jon had endured.

“You know what's worse, they tell me Harry is the one who hit my father with that shovel,” Jon choked back the confession of his darkest secret, “but in my nightmares, I know it was actually me,” 

Rose could no longer hold back the tears, salty wet splashed stained the liner of Jon's coat. She cried for Jon, she cried for Tony, she cried for her missing father and she cried for herself, her complicated childhood coming to an end, stripped of it's pattern and normalcy. Just three days ago, life was simple, and today it was an unraveled mess. 

Rose found it possible to cry properly for the fist time since this whole mess started, the emotion bubbled forth and her resolve finally crumbled in the safeness of his arms.

“Crying? Oh, Rose don't. Not for me,” Jon pulled her to his chest. “This is not how imagined holding you, you know?” He gently tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “All the disadvantages of being involved with you and none of the advantages.”

“What advantages?” asked Rose.

Rose looked down at her hand, splayed across his chest, his shirt a wet mess of tears and snot. Jon stared down at her, a look of bemusement and tenderness on his face. She looked down at her other hand, woven tightly with his as massaged the ball of her thumb with his own. “I have to say, I do think if you differently, Rose. Your not like the rest of them. I see you around the school, a bit of grace and beauty, but burdened with being born in the wrong neighborhood. You aren't bitter about it, though. Your accent, your upbringing...You break all the assumptions, Rose. You're fantastic, you know?”

“The amazing thing is, that you recognized me, right off too. Figured out that I didn't fit in. I really hoped to talk to you at the end of semester, didn't figure it was appropriate while you still were in the mentorship program, and here we are lying out on the grass under an apple tree watching the bird fly. I won't tell on me, if you don't,” Jon chuckled. “Come on, we have to go check on your brother...priorities, Tyler.” They gathered themselves and heading back to the entryway.

Weirdly enough, Rose was missing her mum something fierce. Perhaps realizing her snuggle in the park with Jon had evened the odds with her mum and Jason. “I'm a bit jealous of mum, I guess.”

“Why, not like you have an interest in Jason, do you?” Jon surprisingly felt said emotion threaten to overwhelm him. 

Rose noticed the darkening of his face, “Oh, what if I did have a boyfriend, you'd be a bit jealous. Already, and we've just met?”

“Who? Anyone I know?” asked Jon. “No one at school, I hope.” 

“No, not exactly, but what about Jeff Delobel over at Coal Hill?” Rose suggested.

“Jeff Delobel!” exclaimed Jon. “He's ancient. Please tell me you're joking.”

“Ancient, no older than you, I bet. He's got a nice flat up on the bank of the Thames.”

“I bet he can't even conjugate his verbs properly...j'aurai su, tu auras su, il/elle aura su, nous aurons su, vous aurez su, ils/elles auront su...” he grinned widely. 

“I'm sure he can, he teaches the subject,” Rose responded. “So happy praising your own intelligence you haven't even noticed it's going to rain at any moment,” she pointed helpfully at darkening clouds.

“Look at me, got competition and he's a bloody French teacher,” he grumbled. 

He looked at her and for a moment they stopped in their happy jaunt through the park. Glance over her shoulder she could truly appreciate the timelessness in his eyes. Like that moment in the study, he was magnified, complex, less gentle and no longer the 'good' man. Rose felt a warmth growing, not so much in her heart, but in very core of her being. The connection between them suddenly electric, and she pulled her hand from his, afraid that he would pick up on her sudden arousal. She was discovering his senses where exactly as he purported and much more acute than her own.

“Hey,” Jon said as they found his parked car. “I dare you to make me a proper offer.”

“Ah, picked up on that, did you?” she flushed crimson to the tip of her ears. “Missed your chance, I guess.”

“Rain check?” he purred, prophesying the first few drops of rain that moistened the dust on the windshield.

Jon stayed with the car, rolling down the windows, propping his dirty plimsolls on the dash and producing a battered looking copy of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Jason was still with Jackie when she arrived at the flat. Jackie and Jason sat at the tiny dinette, a box of tissues sat in sodden wadded heaps. Jackie was a mess, her makeup was a day old, her hair in tangles and she had been crying. 

“Didn't expect you to turn up so early, not like the old days where you'd sleep til noon if I let ya,” Jackie ventured with care. 

“You just surprised me, it all, thought I'd have the morning to myself. How's Tony?” queried Rose.

“Awful,” Jackie replied sadly.

“Cuppa, ladies?” Jason asked. “Least I can do before I head out to get myself cleaned up.”

Soon as Jason was occupied in the kitchen, Jackie faced Rose. “I'm sorry, ya know. It's not like I was looking for anything to happen, I was just so sad and in such desperate need of distraction. It's not his fault you know? You know me well enough for that.”

“You could have let me stay with you at the hospital,” Rose offered.

“It's just that these two events in my life had blurred into one another. Tony gets sick, I fall for Jason. Tis the same event in my mind. I can tease 'em out.” Jackie sighed heavily before continuing. “You and Tony, I love ya, but ya depend on me. I have to be present when you are involved, no traipsing off into the past or the future when I am so tied to the here and now. One thing 'bout sex....” she paused before continuing, “for a just a mo, I am young and carefree and I still have a bright future. I can be the m'self that I experience in me own head for a bit. And I love you and Tony, but I need t' run away from that every once in a while.”

“And when Jason isn't about? What then mum?” Rose asked remembering the aching sadness from earlier when she cried in Jon's arms and missing him suddenly. 

“It was my fortune that I didn't hafta, though I suspect I'd get by. I have no shame 'bout this, I'm sorry I didn't stick a sock on the door or something,” she grinned conspiratorially.

Rose took a moment before her mother's grin sunk into her thick skull, what had she forgotten. “That your bloke out there waiting in the car?” Jason returned with three steaming cups. “He coming up? What's his name again....Nathan?”

“Jonathan and no,” Rose replied. “I'll wave him off.” Rose went outside, leaned out the plexiglass window of the landing and shouted, “Pick me up after lunch!” He gave her a bright grin and a mock salute before driving away.

“He's kinda maniac looking, that one,” Jason observed when Rose returned. “You think he's alright in the head?”

“Don't start her on his qualities,” Jacked asked. “He's only Jon Carlisle, the wonder boy of the Carlisle family, PhD twice over and slumming it down here with us estate folk.”

“Oh, a denizen of the ivory tower? Way too affluent for the likes of us,” Jason said in a sing song voice.

“They are well off, spent years in and out of the papers fighting for green space and 'people centered' development schemes,” Jackie rattled off. “Now it's just the two old ladies and 'im. Don't know why they haven't moved to nicer part of London?”

“Tailoring on that suit and the product he puts on his hair could probably feed a village of Somali migrants for a week,” Jason criticized halfheartedly, hand automatically raised to his own thinning locks.

“Lest he's not a cue ball. He's got really great hair,” Rose felt moved to defend him suddenly.

“Jason can forgive himself for being third generation and fully acclimated, he has be hard on the rest of us for the sake of the refugees, lest we forget that it could be a whole lot worse,” Jackie defended him. 

“Well enough of the chit-chat. If I don't get a shower soon, these clothes will become self animated,” Jason waved as he headed out the door.

Rose and Jackie were left to stare at one another. After a moment Rose said “must have been pretty good to cheer you up this much.”

“Oi! We had much in common in the experience department and that counts for a whole lot there, missy!” Jackie said, going to rinse her mug. “I needed it Rose, they think Tony won't last for more than a few days. He's dying. They rung twice this morning to say he was weakening. Tony was my last ditch effort to keep your dad, then things went all pear-shaped, him and that Yvonne he had for a boss. Stupid reason to have a kid.”

“I don't think Tony has noticed, mum. You haven't treated us any differently,” Rose added.

“I stopped caring about your dad then. It was just the three of us and that is all that matters. Oh, and babies are very forgiving. Feed them, burp them, change their nappies and let them sleep, happy as a clam he was. I loved those early days, but I think I might be paying for it now,” Jackie said.

“Mum, you are not paying some sort of karmic debt for trying to keep a failing marriage afloat,” Rose cried. “Are we going to see his this morning?”

“Of course, but try to keep the healthy happy child he was in your memory and don't let this visit forever color your memories of your brother. I call dibs on the shower though,” Jackie moved off in the direction of her bedroom for a change of clothes.

“Rose, you should be happy I've found a bloke. Frees you up a bit for your own life. You won't have to worry 'bout me, just call first before you visit?” Jackie yelled from the bathroom as she closed the door.

Rose was staring into her tea, her mother's worded rattling in her head. This flat, her childhood home, and her mother was already assuming that soon she would be just a visitor to it. For a moment, she had to wonder what Jon saw in her, looking across the cafeteria in the hidden moments she now knew he had been observing her. 

She went to her room to find a change of clothes, deciding that when Jon came back for her, she'd try to look nice. A shower, sundress and freshening of make up later she was ready to visit her brother. 

At the hospital, the dress prove to be inadequate for the aggressive air conditioning and she felt a bit foolish. Tony looked like a little machine with the wires and tubes hooked up to his arms. He was blue grey and shrunken in the huge hospital bed. All that had transpired in the last two days had culminated in this. Jon, Jason, Penelope and Verity shrunk into a faint memory as Rose sat next to Tony, his cold limp hand held between her own. All she wanted to do was collect him in her arms and run away with him.

“Rose,” Jackie said. “It's ok to cry. Lord knows, I've done enough of it myself.”

When she encountered Jason on the landing a few hours ago, she was angry. Sitting with Tony now she channeled that away and added it to the fury she felt for Burosa. Bottled it up and stoppered it, to power what she knew she must do later.

They were interrupted by one of the nurses checking Tony's vital signs. Rose smelled the rotten mint waft up from Tony's body and she had to fight the instinct to heave. Kate looked at Tony, “He's going to have another one of his seizures, I can tell.”

Tony's eyes fluttered open for a split second, and Rose could swear she saw Burosa staring back. His little body contorted suddenly and stilled.

“Can't you smell that...the mint?” Rose asked the nurse. 

“No, how could you tell he was going to convulse like that?” asked the nurse.

“The smell,” replied Rose

“Her bloke thinks he's possessed. Utter rubbish,” said Jackie.

“That's odd,” the nurse replied. “That's what the orderly said this morning after cleaning the room. He's on IV, and feeding tube, and it's strengthening him. His system is under a lot of stress and I have no clue what we are trying to outrun. So if you want to think of it as possession, so be it. I've got no better diagnosis and neither does the doctor.”

“I'll be right back,” Rose moved over to the waiting room and looked up the Carlisle's land line number in the directory. When she finally dialed she got Verity Smith.

“Verity....” she tried to her best to attempt at conversing with her as an equal. “It's Rose Tyler. Tony is failing.”

“We have offered a way out,” Verity replied.

“Jon says you'll answer me honestly if I ask directly,” Rose said. “Is there any other way you can think of to save him?”

“I vow by the sacred flame, the elixir and the loom,” Verity replied, ancient words transmitted through modern technology. 

“Will I change for the worse?” Rose asked.

“No more change than is already happening to a young woman as she leaves childhood behind. Both changes are difficult, but you will survive them both,” responded Verity.

“Do you have some ulterior motive for me to make this change?” Rose said. “There is, Jon could tell.”

“Other than being the last of our kind? Other than being lonely?” Verity asked back. “No.”

“Can we do it now then?” her final question. 

The elderly voice said, “Tonight, we can be ready. Do not eat, no alcohol or caffeine this afternoon. Tell me, Rose, are you a virgin?”

Rose was caught off-guard by the directness of the question. “No, does it matter?”

“How long has it been, Rose? It will make a difference. You cannot be connected intimately to another, it ties you to your present state too strongly. We three can assist you, but we cannot untied those knots.”

“Almost four years, is that enough?” Rose said. “He's moved on, got a family of his own.”

“That is well enough. I don't want to make this any more difficult for you,” Verity apologized.

“Is Jon there?” she asked.

“Staring at me from the doorway of the study,” Verity replied “Do you wish him to come for you?” 

“No. I'll see you tonight, I want to spend some more time the Tony,” Rose replied. “Just tell him that I'll find my own way there later.”

“What's that all about? Planning a wiccan rite or something?” she noticed Jason Ang's curious glare. He was leaning against the coffee dispenser, thumbing up through his phone messages.

“Nothing that elaborate,” ….I hope she added in her mind. “Something I've arranged, hope it helps.” 

A presence entered the cozy little waiting room and a familiar voice spoke.

“Can this be my best girl, Rosie” it said. “You look so adult, you might even finally be taller than your mum.”

Rose righted herself and turned to the voice, blazingly familiar yet achingly foggy in her memory. For a moment she could not remember his name or his relation to her, but suddenly overwhelmed with the presence of her absent father, a little less hair and a little more paunch then before. His girlfriend stood at a tactful distance, noticeably pregnant and probably only a half a dozen years older than Rose herself. “Rose this is Joan,” Pete stepped a side. “Joan, this is my daughter, Rose.”


	9. Chapter 9

Rose and Jackie splurged a bit and paid for a taxi back to the hospital to visit Tony. Jackie bustled into the room, opening the closed curtains and cranking open the casement window. The smell of asphalt and tar filled the room, warming it and somewhat dissipating the collection of stale minty air that had accumulated in their absence.

“You should sit with him,” urged a nurse. So Rose sat with him and arranged Booboo Doggie under the covers, she read him books until she was horse. When her voice finally gave out, she hugged his frail form and whispered, “Tony, stay strong a bit longer, I'll fix this, I promise. You behave for mum, now, I've got to go and don't forget I love you, Tony.” 

She memorized his gaunt form and pressed her lips to his clammy forehead. She tried to hide the turmoil on her face from her mother, but Jackie noticed right away. “Don't beat yourself up over this, Rose!” Jackie shook her out of her reverie.  
“Like you can talk,mum. You are being just as hard on yourself,” Rose retorted. 

“I'd take it on you if I could, but I'm afraid I'm at capacity, myself,” Jackie fought back a sob. “I could bear anything, if you two didn't have to suffer.”

“What about Dad? Why drag him into this?” Rose asked in Jackie's silence.

“I didn't want him to disappoint you further. He should see you on his own terms rather than only when we need him. He's not heartless, Rose. He's just distracted by his new life,” Jackie said.

“Distracted!” exclaimed Rose. “What's he doing here at all, he'd missed every holiday and birthday since he discovered Joan.”

“Rose, hush!” Jackie said. Pete is not a cruel man, he was quite romantic in his day, but you can't pay the bills on romance. He just had ill luck that he found a woman who could not be sustained on wishes and romance alone.

“He's not bothering me, mum,” Rose said. “It's the girlfriend, Joan and the baby bump she's sporting. I'm a bit creeped out that he's got a replacement lined up already with Tony so sick.” 

“Is that why you turned him down on his dinner invite tonight?” Jackie asked.

“Maybe,” Rose hedged, not wanting to tell Jackie of her plans to spend the evening doing gods' know what with the Carlislse witches. 

Pete insisted on driving Rose back to the estate, his SUV purred with affluence that Rose was suddenly, enviously missing from her life. 

“What a quaint little shop,” Joan exclaimed, spying tiny kiosk that was Close-it Hair Designs. “Though I'd be concerned that if a panel van missed the roundabout that it would be flattened.” 

“It's sturdier than it looks, Mum says are more likely to be hit by arrant birds than cars. You can see the concrete pillars have taken a beating around it,” Rose answered.

“Is that where Jackie works? Poor lady, must be terribly warm with all that glass in the full summer sun,” Joan attempted to commiserate. 

“Hey, Dad, could you stop here?” Rose asked as they left the west end of the round about at the intersection of Totter's Lane. 

“What? Turn here? Sure, Rose, but whatever for?” Pete slowed the vehicle to a crawl and creeped up the narrow cobblestone ally. 

Jon opened the gate to the carriage house circle, warned of her presence by something yet unknown to Rose. “That was fortunate for the gent to open the gate for us, I have no clue how I was going to back down that alley.” 

“I'll get out here. It's close enough to walk the rest of the way.” Rose said hurriedly knowing that her father's direction sense and internal map of London was is no way good enough for him to realize the estate was another twenty minute walk to southwest. Rose knew that her dad and Joan would find Diu Solum impressive, but she had grown possessive of its grounds and the people within. 

“Who's the bloke?” asked Joan slyly.

“Jonathon Carlisle,” Rose answered curtly, and her father chuckled. “Boyfriend, eh?” Joan snorted back a giggle. 

“He's not my boyfriend. He's a physic's teacher and my co-worker,” Rose found herself on the defensive. 

“Well now I know you had a better offer for dinner and he's so gainfully employed you make sure he pays. I might further observe that he's a bit old for you, but I'd prove myself a hypocrite,” Pete winked at Joan who blushed furiously. “So give your dad a smooch and off you go girl.”

Rose acquiesced to request, the suddenly familiar smell of cherry-flavoured Vitex and his aftershave threatened to overwhelm her with nostalgia for earlier days. “Thanks for dropping me,” Rose said to him.

Joan waved as they drove off, Rose watched them uncertainly as Jon closed the gate behind them. Their hands found the others and they walked down the darkened lane into the circle of stone angels. She could feel a tension in Jon, a anticipation in the very air they breathed. The house itself felt like it was holding it's breath. 

“Your brother, how is he?” Jon asked. “How's your mum holding up?”

Rose shared her afternoon with him. The stone angels suddenly making her anxious as if they were listening and waiting for something. Jon didn't soothe her either, he listened, but seemed to be focused on the angels. She would swear he was watching them for movement.

“Let's go inside- you'd be safer somewhere in the light,” he said. “Your probably a bit faint with hunger, easier that way. I won't offer you anything, but I could absolutely murder a piece of banana cake right now. Lovely sun dress, by the way.” 

“It's too thin now,” Rose said, “but I'm going to have to retire it soon.” 

“Don't even think it, Rose,” Jon exclaimed. “I like this yellow dress on you, you glow all pink skin and yellow.”

“I won't take credit for glowing,” Rose said suddenly serious. 

“Tyler –“ he suddenly interrupted her. “Leave now, don't look back. Now while you still have your wits about you. Forget London, run for the highlands, cross the sea and live a real life. Find some nice bloke, steal his heart and marry him. Have a good life. Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life.” But she made no effort to leave and he made not effort to force her out and a moment later they were interrupted by his mother's appearance at the door.

“Don't take him seriously, Rose,” she said. “He's a bit of a martyr, that one. He must think we women are emotional creatures to be swayed by a heartfelt argument. I say rather, that you have an admirable focus on the well-being of your brother and will not be dissuaded by his charms. Good on you.”

Jon released a heavy sigh as Penelope commandeered Rose's arm, and moved her compellingly towards the interior of the house.

“Goodbye, Tyler!” he said as if it was a long trip he was going upon. “Sometimes I thought I might try to be human, changeover the other way. I thought you'd be my bridge...”

“Jon, you tried living as a human when you stuffed your extra senses in that fob watch and you didn't last but nine weeks. You've tried and failed at that little experiment, drove your grad assistant barmy, poor girl.”

“Then farewell to the very idea of it, then,” he snapped back. “See you later, Tyler. Or maybe sooner rather than later. I've a bit role in the upcoming theatrics. I must dash off now to learn my lines. Ta.”

“That man is a puzzle with a few too many pieces lying under the table,” Penelope muttered to herself as she led Rose upstairs. “Someday he may resemble a real picture, but tonight's project is of your making. Part one, release the real world, you may even find this pleasant.”

Rose had a steaming bath in a giant claw foot tub. A half a dozen candles lit the window ledge and in the corner a fat stone Budda emitted an incense that reminded her of times visiting the dorm room of her classmates at uni. It wasn't hashish or marijuana, she'd know that scent anywhere, but something richer and more lazy. The vintage wallpaper seem to shimmer and move in the candle light, much like the silver birches behind the gates. The very ceiling was at once damp like a cloud and then absent and showing her a starry night sky, a very thread of the milky way heavy and fecund. Vista's would open before her with soaring reptiles, frozen waves of ice thousands of feet high and all manner of people, cat face people, people who were trees, people who where rhinos and lumpy potatoes. The vistas changed again to those of more terrestrial origin, the hills of Italy with people in togas and the highlands of Scotland with men in kilts and woad. Those shifted into futuristic lands of robots and people with metal arms and cold computerized eyes. 

Penelope helped her from the bath, squeezing a few drops of oil from a bottle in the corner and rubbing into her shoulders and neck as the candles hissed and flared. “Did you travel? Did you see?”

“It didn't stay still, once I thought I had arrived, it changed again,” Rose stared at the soft towel around her shoulders.

“This house sits upon an absque schisma. It is my family's birth rite and responsibility. It is a crossroad of many lines of space and time,” Penelope continued having slipped into the familiar cadence of the experience teacher. “These lines cross in all of us, tie back and re-intersect somewhere before or somewhere later. Only the lady or lord of time can follow them. I am your Visionary, we leave your former self behind you. Jon will be your Castlellan and guard your journey and Verity will be your Loom to form your future self.”

She placed a heavy medallion over Rose's head, it nestled just above her breasts and the slipped a thin cotton chemise over hear head. When Rose looked down the frock did little to hide the tips of her breast, or the medallion and the floor swam beneath her at one moment tile, the next a rocky outcropping or forest leaves. The lack of food was making her dizzy and the room swam before her. Penelope brought her an white goblet with tiny little swirls of blue along the edges of the base and rim, it was filled with a heady wine. 

“That smells heady even from here. May I ask what it is?” Rose studied the decanter across the room. 

“It's a red wine from a grape called Marquette, one of Jon's finds,” Penelope said pouring her a measure in the goblet. Won't give you much, you'll need all of your focus for what is ahead.” She replaced the decanter on the stand, “Your hand please?”

Rose obeyed without much thought was was rewarded for her trust with a poke to the index finger. Penelope squeezed a bit of fresh blood into Rose's wine, before handing her the glass and a small square of tissue paper for the poke. 

“Bloody hell, whatcha do that for?” Rose almost yelled indignantly, dabbing the finger with the tissue, before sticking it in her mouth.

“Do you suppose Briar Rose had a moment to suck her finger before falling into that deep sleep? What did she see in her one hundred year slumber? So here you go, the blood of the earth and the blood of a women,” she handed her the goblet. “Drink deeply and hold it for a moment before swallowing, let the temperature of the wine match the temperature of you, before you swallow.” 

Rose waited as instructed, before swallowing the wine down. It was a bit morbid she thought, drinking her own blood, but then again, how many times had she bitten her tongue over the years. She was familiar with the taste of her own blood. She swirled the goblet with the rest of the drought and could almost see the droplet of blood creating streaks, like paint, in the wine. And then she felt it a pressure behind her eyes, like the sliding of a pocket door in her mind. Something inside pressed against her head, trying to get out. 

“Whoa, sure that's only wine?” she asked Penelope.

“Did a door open for you?” Penelope examined her eyes carefully. “You are close, you know? A little relaxation of the mind and one tiny push and you wish to fly. Look here at and beyond yourself.”

A large oval framed mirror stood in the corner of the room, its age evidenced by the waviness of the glass. Rose slowly approached it, the steam from the bath feathered at the edges of her image. The baby fat of her adolescence had somehow melted away in the last few years, she was slender bordering occasionally bordering on too thin even with her diet of chips. Her hair had darkened in the water, perhaps for a moment resembling it's natural color and her eyes shined back at her brown with a hint of gold around the edges. She bit her bottom lip for a moment pondering her condition and was surprised at the expression on her face once again proving she was real and not just a figment of her own imagining.

“This is not intended to be a task that will be simple,” Penelope continued. “Take in your reflection for a moment, to be a pin-prick in time, female, mortal and full of potential life.”

Rose studied her reflection, attaching it to just this place and just this time, forever. 

“Self-acceptance, not exactly the part of sex ed they spend much time emphasizing,” she said with a wry smile.

“We daughter's of time can see back before the society we have today, to simpler times when the balance between male and female was more even,” Penelope said. “When fertility was tied to the moon and the birds and the bees were mere speculation. Your senses are not yet awakened, but for the moment I will serve as conduit to your wishes.”

Rose wished and saw in his hospital bed, her brother, Tony. The leads to the heart rate monitor showed a steady but thready heart beat and shallow respiration. The shadow of Burosa crept across his small body, blacking his veins and graying his skin. She knew in that moment how much time he had left and how complete his consumption would be and her heart clenched with a fierce maternal love for the child. 

“Stop!” said Penelope and severed the link. “If he chose this moment to feed, all would be lost. He would become aware of you, aware of me and your plan would be lost. Let us not tarry longer. We will introduce you to your sleeping senses. You must take mastery over them in this space and in this time. I'll give your these three tokens.” The coins she placed in Rose's hand were metallic and engraved with circles and swirls, a language that Rose could not read.

Penelope opened the outer door the garden and complete darkness.

“Is Jon in the garden?” Rose asked. A friend out there would be a comfort. “Castlellan, means gatekeeper, right?”

“He is not out there, he is in here,” Penelope tapped Rose's forehead. “Seek him out, feel him in your mind and head in that direction. Your direction is linear, do not cross your own path and do not double back. You must be resolute in your journey until it's end.” 

“What if I cross my path, how would I know? What would happen?” Rose asked.

“You'll know. Once you pass through the doorway that Jon is guarding there is no turning back. You may not lose your life to this process, but your very sanity is at stake,” Penelope said in all seriousness.

“I'm all in. Either I save my brother or I die a little everyday without him,” Rose said. 

“Verity believes in your success, as do I. Jon is the one who is worried,” Penelope reassured her. 

“Like the finger prick, I suspect there is something you are not telling me,” Rose proposed, but the door and Penelope with it where gone and she was enveloped by the darkness. She tried feeling the ground and it was smooth and cool as glass. She stood for the moment reaching out with her eyes and ears and in a final moment of desperation tried feeling for a breeze or a scent on the air. The darkness was oppressive and she feared for the moment that if she felt for any wall or ceiling she's be suddenly crushed with the claustrophobia of the grave. 

For a moment she felt as if she were in the center of a black hole from which matter, light and even time could not escape. Then she felt herself expand, in silence and darkness, flying past the spirits of the living, the dead and the yet unborn. She smelled the violets in Tony's hospital room, following by Jon's pilfered bananas. Then a cool breath next to her ear, a finger touched her cheek and her lips and suddenly the taste of her mother's best chocolate cake, followed by Grandma Prentice's favorite strawberry icing. The ghostly hand tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, tracing the shell of her earlobe with the lightest of brushes. She thought for the moment of the dreams of demon lovers in the night. The memory of dreams and seeking something she know may exist but didn't remember the dream until now. 

She was Rose Tyler, with the too wide smile and bottle blond hair, stuck in a dark place, supposedly preparing to take on Prydon Burosa, the wicked creature that was draining her little brother dry. “Rose,” said Kate. “Miss Tyler,” said Stephen Willis. “Rosie,” said Mickey's Gran. “Rose Tyler,” said Verity. “Tyler,” said Jon in his most authoritative teacher voice. Tony did not call, instead he floated in her vision, a tiny fetus, blackened with rot.

Time did not pass in this place were Rose waited. It circled upon itself, crossed and weaved and Rose sat in the middle and watched it spin its spell around her. But suddenly upon the back of her own hand a crease of light appeared, between her fingers and as she separated them the crack grew wider, opened into a “v” and colored the whole horizon. As confusing as the darkness was, the light was just a disorientating. It resolved itself into an open door she vaguely remembered as the double blue doors with the tiny windows at the top of Jon's stairwell and the ever so unhelpful sign that said “Pull to open” when you actually had to push the doors in. 

“Go,” whispered Penelope's voice and Rose obeyed. She stepped through the doorway and into a misty gray world that she eventually recognized as the Peckham Rye Park, underneath the tree were she and Jon had spent the afternoon. The leaves of that tree now rained down in an autumnal torrent and every once in a while a fat raindrop would splash upon her cheek. The path lead to the gate of Heath Comprehensive and wrapping the chains around the door was Jon Carlisle. He wore the black turtleneck from the meeting in the study, ever so much the villain in the darkened hollows of his face and the set of his brow. He had a rueful smile that darkened and threatened to consume her whole if she only offer herself up to him. 

“Staff meeting is canceled this morning, Tyler,” Jon said. “What no clean clothes on a Monday, shame, Tyler.” 

“Speak of yourself, Jon. You seem to be missing your tie,” Rose retorted. 

“Exactumundo, Rose!” he said and thoughts turning on a dime, “Don't happen to have some spare lunch money? I'd ask for a freebie, but...even the teachers have to pay for their lunch.”

“If you call what they serve here food,” she teased.

“Hey, even I have to eat occasionally with the masses. Now be a good girl and pay up, before I have be ask nicely,” he purred. 

Rose handed over the first of her coins. “What do I get in return? she asked. 

“A butter knife, of my own creation, I might add,” he flourished a hand length cylinder with a glowing blue tip. “It's traditional to use a sword on this part of the journey, but youngsters of our age have no practical experience wielding them. So, I fished around for a bit and found you a lightsabre. If it feels like a butter knife in your hand, just imagine it's a laser and you'll do fine,” he handed it to her. 

“What do I use it on?” she asked.

“Any thing that won't let you pass, just point and think,” he said. “Now follow this path and don't leave it and don't look back, that's as bad as crossing over it.” For the moment she would swear his was looking down the front of her chemise and she was confirmed this when he asked, “Kiss for luck?”

“Is is required?” she replied adding a little sultry hint to her voice quite deliberately. 

“Well...” he tugged at his earlobe. “I might have added that bit on, just for my own reassurance.” The lights of his room flickered a few time and started to fade.

“Wait, where are we?” suddenly uneasy she asked. The cobble stone underneath her feet crumbled and split as if her sudden lack of compass upturned the entire world.

Jon was suddenly angry, gripped her arms above her elbows. “Don't say that, don't think that.” His grip on her arms was so tight it hurt. He was scared, his eyes danced and sweat sprung upon his brow. As the ground stopped shaking and solidified a bit beneath her feet, he finally relented his grip. “Close one there, Tyler!” he said. “It's all perception here. You can drive yourself mad in these parts and you'll take me along because I'm locked up in here with you,” he tapped her forehead like Penelope had done earlier. 

She closed what little distance that remained between them, only momentarily mindful of her relative state of undress. “Well if we are stuck between my ears you must know what I'm thinking?” He closed the last few inches and claimed her mouth with a searing kiss. She was not easy on him in return and they broke a few minutes later, both panting heavily.

“Wotcha?” he stared at her. “Wow...um....definitely under-rated,” and looking around at their school-work environment, “and definitely something I'm going to have to suppress whenever I walk through this courtyard in the coming weeks.” He pulled a small yale lock key from his pocket and inserted it into the brick wall, opening it into a endless circular hallway. “First rule, don't wander off the path, don't cross your path and don't backtrack. Just keep going, if you have a choice, choose which ever is least likely to send you back the way you came. Use the screwdriver as needed. Maybe we can revisit your thoughts? I'll see you later, Tyler,” he winked at her and graciously stepped out of her way.

“Not if I don't see you first,” she traced a single finger tip across the middle of his turtleneck clad chest and stepped through the doorway. The hallway was endless, gray and reminded her of every science fiction show, good or bad, made in the last twenty years. She suddenly realized that this was perhaps Jon's doing and as soon as she asserted her own will on the environment, it shifted into a sun dappled forest. The forest shifted, but so did Rose. She loped along, lanky of from, golden eyed and golden furred. This was her forest, where monster's like Burosa hunted untended cubs and wolves like Rose brought the retribution of the pack. 

An outcropping on her left because the footings of an impossible building, a council estate, block housing with central stairwells and courtyards could be seen between the trees. The smell and sound of traffic assaulted her senses and the forest of her imagination merged with the jungle of her everyday life. Mrs. Hemmerling, spectacles perched on the bridge of her nose was sitting on a rock as Rose trotted by and said, “Don't get into a tight spot, young lady. Be mindful,” but Rose already had put her out of mind and pressed on. The dueling women's clothing stores passed by on her left, covered with the vines and detritus of a decade of neglect, the plastic dummies in the windows beating on the glass in an attempt to get out to her. Rose picked up the pace just in case they were successful. Cod Fellows window was an aquarium full of fat goldfish, which would occasionally jump out of the building and land on the side walk, freshly fried and wrapped in newsprint, and seated on the stoop was Tony, old and sick, an untouched serving of chips and his favorite fruit juice at his side. 

Rose didn't pause, but she promised to him under her breath, “Love you brother, and I'll fix this.”

Her mother's kiosk was alive with beauty posters. The clever men and their clever hair cuts, primped and winked at Rose as she passed by. Jason was seated in the chair, Jackie happily running the clippers over his nearly bald pate. Rose almost went over to tell her that it was a lost cause, but she noticed her own footprints on the pavement and realized should would have crossed over her own path. The wolf within her growled, and the pack in the jungle appeared as a dozen pair of golden eyes in every nook and cranny, ready to devour and rend her limb from limb if she broke the covenant of the pack and crossed her path. 

With the appearance of the eyes, the urban jungle became darker and more sinister. The gutters filled with water and trash, bricks crumbled at the tops and edges of the buildings. Rose started to feel a pressure, as if her whole body was being squeezed. The air was heavy around her and she struggled for breath in the oppressive smog and humidity of the decaying city. The atmosphere was think and she pushed forward and each step brushed past a shadowy figure. The figures were short and tall, fat and thin, ugly and beautiful, blind men and vain women, lame boys and grizzled grandmothers and as the very walls of reality pressed around her they grew more fantastic. Women so thin the were made of paper, squids in cans, pterodactyls, a dashing blue eyed man in a long navy jacket who flashed a smart grin before pushing past, a neanderthal man and a amphibious creature with bulbous eyes and reverse jointed limbs dragging a line of shackled young women in prison garb all flowed past her. 

She found herself at a fork in the road, on leading to a high plain and another snaking back into the city and she followed Jon's advice faithfully and struck out for the plateau. In the gutter along the road a pair of red skulled workers stirred a pool of blood, and further on a huge werewolf creature pulled fur from it's forearms and dusted it along a primrose path. Rose's whole body ached, here shoulders and arms twisted painfully as she fended off the attacks of bat like creature dive bombing her from the trees. She fell to her knee hard and stood up, bright red drops of blood staining her gown from the abrasions on her legs. Still she continued past various robot men, both clockwork and solid steal in their bloody work of cutting up human corpses and pulling out brains and other organs. The path was still easy to follow as it wound through hedgerows and sharp throned bushes and Rose finally drew the “knife” that Jon had given her. It sprung to life a blue beam which she used to cut back the branches and clear her path. For every branch she cut, the remainder would yell in a chorus of “murderer” in the voices she recognized as her students and a cut or weal would appear on her arms or legs. Water pooled around her feet and she grew faint and sick, sticky in her own blood and the sap of the plants. The vegetation growing so think that she had to clear away the ground to look for the path before pressing on. The water flowed around her knees now, thick with her own blood and soaking her shift with streaks of red and yellow. 

The wall of briars loomed before her and no matter how much she strained she could not see it's end. How much farther she thought and for a moment, before she could realized the mistake of her temptation and stepped backward on the path to look at how far she had come. “Never go back,” Jon's voice warned her, but over her shoulder she could see an endless vista of branching paths. Jackie and Pete standing at the altar, her baby self at another wedding, being tutored in maths by a tweedy professor with a bow tie, a red bicycle on her twelfth birthday. She saw Verity Smith, very young and beautiful, and almost an inch taller than her sharp, big eared husband in a battered leather jacket. Stephen Willis rooting through the vocal library looking for a misplaced arrangement, she saw Penelope, holding a baby at arms-length before placing him back in a bassinet. Then she saw a young Jon, face submerged in a pool of water, big hands holding him under as a furious little blond boy fought off his attacker. She saw Jason chatting with relatives on Skype and she saw her reflection with all of its endless possibilities. All the decisions, good and bad, which had brought her to this point. 

Her whole body shuddered and writ big in letters in the sky B A D W O L F. Rose suddenly realized her mistake and immediately dove into the hedge, heedless of the damage done to her body. The vines ensnared her, the thorns tore at her sides, eyes and hair and she thrashed and writhed to further entangle herself. She was suffocating in the vines and was being pulled into the shallow water at her feet. For a moment she thought she was drowning as her lungs filled with water. Yet as she was pulled under, her hand found purchase and something warm and solid. He groped further and was seized by strong arms and pulled free of the vegetation. Jon helped her work the water out of her lungs with a few strong pats on the back. She pulled the sticky mass of vines from her limbs and clambered onto dry land. Jon was visibly shaken, dark storm clouds danced across his brown, his eyes a blaze of lightening and worry. He was similarly wet and covered in the green mass.

“No short cuts, Tyler. You were almost the death of me. First rule, don't wander off, I said, and she looks back and decides to make up for it by diving right back in. You crossed your own time-stream there, Rose...very dangerous,” he said. She looked up and saw Penelope and Verity seated on an old park bench watching them. 

“Give me back my knife,” he said. “I'll give you something better in it's place, I promise. You are past my stage now, nothing left for me to do for you.”

“I won't back track again,” she promised as she handed over the knife and he gave her a silver rod with a glowing blue tip. 

“You're beyond that stage now, Rose,” he said. “You couldn't go backwards now no matter how you tried.”

Rose strode up to Verity. “You risked him,” she said. “Why?”

“To fix something that was broken long ago. We had our own reasons, and they were not contrary to your own,” she said. “See now where you are.”

Rose looked, they were atop the plateau she had seen in the distance. Moss and lichen, no trees or vegetation, well above the thistle and thorn and the decaying urban landscape that heralded the start of her journey. A single spring bubbled in a collection pool, various flumes and dams channeled the flow of the water down the plateau. Something essential and tied to the very earth. “This is here, before now, before people?” she said. A statement of her realization rather than a real question. 

“Something here, by accumulation or accident, resides within us. This our ancestral memory of discovering this place. That forest, that river is our home, covered over with the accumulation of eons of human habitation. This is our home space, where we can read the past and see the future. Alterations made here, though the journey is dangerous, have concrete results out there.” Verity, removed one of the board from the weir, releasing the water to further drown the mass of thorn and vine Rose had climbed out of. 

“No,” said Rose and redirected the water away from the mass of vegetation, letting the water pool once more where it overflowed. 

“You must journey on alone, now, I'm afraid,” Verity said. “I am the Loom. Give me the coin.” Rose blanched. “You've lost it?” said Verity in a panick.

“No,” said Rose, opening her clenched left hand. The skin as puckered and raw around it and she quickly passed it to Verity.

“You'll be very strong reading the time lines, Rose Tyler,” she said. “Your path from this point forward is of your own making. Follow the water where you directed it, you can use the wand, Jon gave you for light.” 

Rose looked a Jon. Her hair was a mass, her skin aching and abraded with the cuts of thousands of thorns and her ankle was cruelly twisted. “I can't walk anymore,” she said. “I don't think I can support my own weight.” 

“Then crawl, Tyler, crawl. You must. I cannot do this with you as much as I desperately hoped I might,” he told her, suddenly nervous and growing paler as she hesitated. 

“I'll never win The Weakest Link if I don't play,” Rose gamely squared her shoulders, flashed Jon a tongue touched grin and took her first step. She was on her knees within a few meters. The light from the silver rod kept the worst of the rocks and gravel from beneath her tender knees, but as she weakened so did the light. Eventually she found her self scrabbling over rocks, her foot occasionally wedged in crevices as she following the trickle of water down the plateau. Eventually the water sneaked between a narrow gap and Rose pressed her way between. She lowered herself along the pass, but as she descended the gap narrowed. “I'm too big to fit through,” she whispered and decided to change her perspective, using her hands and shoulders to push through the crevasse. It was like being birthed by the mountain and as soon as that thought touched her head, she was pushed suddenly forward, all previous experiences and beliefs of one, Rose Marion Tyler, being compressed and reorganized to the point that she thought her head would split like a melon. She emerged into warmth and darkness, tightly held as a cup of water was held to her lips.

“Drink, Rose,” Jon whispered. She lay limp, leaning heavily against his form on the floor of the bathroom of Gallifrey House, 

The fat Budda on the window ledge smiled down at her, and the little black cat from the study lazily watched her from it's perch on the sink. Jon held her tight, Penelope holding the cup for her. “Oh, Rose,” he said, “I saw you change. You burned and I thought you'd die.” He kissed her reverently. “You are my Briar Rose who will love the prince who wakes her. I've had it now, Tyler....no hope for , I'm afraid.”

“I was awake before your kiss, but I appreciate the sentiment,” Rose attempted to sit up further. Her whole body ached as if her travails where real. The dress was splashed with the crimson of her own blood and she examined her hands to see them whole and unblemished. The duality she had sensed in Jon, had blurred and merged, as if his part in her journey had corrected something within himself.

“I lived, but did I change?” she asked.

“Look for yourself,” said Verity, moving the mirror in front of her. She tried to rise, but her legs failed her. Jon scooped her up effortlessly and carried her to the mirror. Instead of the the blending of Jackie and Pete that looked out of her bathroom mirror in the morning, she was something more. A creature wrought of her parents, and time and the power of her own will. Her visage blurred into that of a wolf, a predator to scare off the jackals hounding her pack and as it faded the golden eyes remained. She turned to Jon and found he was looking not at her face but had nuzzled his nose into her neck. 

“Blokes, don't change,” she said to him crossly and he started from his spot, a bit lost and suddenly embarrassed at his proximity. 

“Sorry, I didn't mean to, but you smell so good,” he stammered. He looked abashed in front of his mother and grandmother and then for a second considered the change wrought within himself, and then chuckled.

“Rose,” said Verity placing a small plastic square in her palm. Rose turned it over and it was a cheap self inking stamp of the boot sale variety. She turned it over and it was a simple paw print, the they that Tony always clambered over at the library during adopt-a-pet week. 

“Is this it?” she looked up at Verity, her expression considering and suddenly more sinister.

“Yes,” she replied, “I know you are tired, but this must be done now while the energy of your regeneration lingers. Give it a name and give it a mission.”

Rose's head ached, her shoulders and arms were muzzy and fatigued. She tried to form words and she noticed Jon's eager eyes prodding her along. He took her in a loose embrace, and whispered in her ear, “You know what you need to do, use words, new and glittering words.” 

“Stamp, your name is Bad Wolf. I'm sharing my power with you and you will be my hunter.” She paused for a moment. “You are to be the shackles I place upon my enemy across all of time and space. You will rend and rip, tear and toss his insignificance about. His is tiny. I can see the whole of time and space, every single atom of his existence, and I command you to divide them from the living.” She looked up at the circle of witches and asked, “Is that enough?”

“Quite, my dear,” exclaimed Penelope.

“Fantastic! Rose,” Jon said, “I'm staying on your good side.” He looked to Penelope and Verity, “Happy now? You've got two of us to mind now.” Offering her a small hand towel stained with her own blood, “Here, wrap up the stamp and guard it til we can put it to use.”

Rose looked at the stamp, it had changed, the friendly paw-print, elongated and more sinister as she tucked it into the towel.

“Welcome, sister!” said Verity, kissing Rose's left cheek and flashing a rare smile.

“Welcome, sister!” said Penelope, kissing Rose's right cheek. Rose and Jon looked to one another.

“Why the hell not?” Jon asked her. "You've put your mark on me as well and truly as if you used the stamp." 

“My choice,” she replied and pulled him down by his shirt into a kiss. He kissed back very gently, and she felt the kiss was haunted by the lost boy found in the front seat of the car all those years ago. Something heavy and very familial formed between them extending off into a mutually assured forever. He was startled himself by the kiss, like something broken in his very humanity was restored.

“Let's see to Tony, first,” Rose said as if the kiss was a question and a promise that she needed to consider before answering. 

“Day off from work, tomorrow? We'll corner him after you've had a good sleep,” he agreed.

“Come, Rose,” said Verity. “You'll have to be as brave tomorrow as you were today.”

“I'll send a plate up,” said Penelope. “Sleep well.”

Scooping her into his arms, Jon carried her forth from the bathroom and down the hall to the waiting guest room.


	10. Chapter 10

“That's him!” exclaimed Jon, as he rounded the corner. Backing Rose away around the hedge, he gesture affectionate. He was giddy with the excitement of the hunt. “I do believe Tyler that he is ...gardening,” he emphasized the “d” like the action was scandalous.

“Idiot, on this chilly morning?” Rose asked, peaking around the hedge to get her own look see, her tone of voice a mirror of Jon's affection with a hint of a hunter stalking her quarry.

“He looks like a normal chap. Elders don't always feel temperature like we do, he's perfectly disguised that way. He looks so pedestrian in that get up....is that the right word? ...pedestrian?” he rolled the word around in his mouth for it's taste.

“He's a dolt if he planting perennials without watering them, they won't last a day,” Rose said. “Used to help my grandma Prentice with the plants, and its way too late in the spring to be starting something.”

The had found Prydon Burosa under three addresses on Google. An older address in Mayfair and a newer address in out in Borough and the shop under “importers”. 

They had set off on the Vespa well after the start of their traditional work day, when students and fellow co-workers might have noticed they where playing hooky (together). The new address had led them to a swanky townhouse in a recently redeveloped area. Each facade representing a different era of London's architecture. The area was fresh with decorative concrete, new cast iron fencing and elaborate topiary. 

Jon had presented her with a vintage pair of RayBan sunglasses for the task ahead and the wind stayed out of her eyes so she could enjoy the ride. She suddenly found she could focus on a tree, feel its history and estimate its eventual demise. She could watch a gull in the sky, see where it came from and the various destinations that it may choose as an expression of its primitive free will. A whole new sense had opened up to her, the entire potential of every living thing was an open book for her perusal. 

“Oh Jon, the things I see”, she for a moment lost hold of his waist to turn around an follow the time line of a particularly intriguing tom cat.

“Oi, hold on, Tyler,” he admonished. “You can't see your own future, so don't crack your skull doing silly stunts.” 

The area was posh, Rose had to admit to herself. She was envious of the green space, the presumption of automobile ownership that each built-in garage made. Jon paused for a moment, pointing up the hill to a row of townhouses, new-built and almost unfinished. “Up there, newest development in an up and coming neighborhood. Let's do some reconnaissance a bit. Here...” he fished out a pair of tiny opera glasses from an inner pocket of his pinstriped jacket. 

“You, and your endless gadgets,” she admonished playfully. 

“Looks like there is a service alley behind the houses,” he said, “we might be able to get to a high spot and look in the backyard with the glasses.” 

“Prev, you” she teased.

“Am not,” he retorted with mock affront. 

From a higher vantage point the could look down upon Burosa's backyard, watch him pot little plants and brew sun tea. 

“It is him, isn't it? You look dubious,” Jon said.

“He's just different. Like I'm spying on his son, not him,” Rose replied.

“Well, your brother's youth went somewhere,” he pointed directly at Burosa. “Wanker gives witches a bad name.”

The tiny opera glasses revealed a man much more robust than Rose remembered. The blotches and gray spots were gone replaced with a healthy glow. His hair and beard were coming in a shade of red which angered Rose incredibly in that the hue was stolen directly from her little brother. Burosa's head suddenly came up and Jon snatched the glasses away. 

“Enough!” said Jon. “He'll be on to us if we linger any longer.”

The oppressive heat had finally broken and a chill was in the air. Jon actually sported a golden brown trench coat and Rose had found an old puffer vest in Carlisle's storage closet. Rose was suddenly chilled by fact that Burosa could sense them from such a distance.

“Tempt him with your willingness,” Jon said, “a little variety goes a long way. Can you simultaneously look to look attractive while being repulsed?” 

“Should I go for a chav look?” Rose asked.

“Nah, too much of that round here to tempt him,” Jon replied. “Anyhow, you're a bit mature for that now, he's seen that. You're the whole package, youthful and mature, waifish yet strong, awkward and confident, all mixed up. Verity thinks the mixture will attract him and she's dead smart, that one.” 

Rose came to a halt, “I'm mixed up? That's royal, that is.”

Jon turned back toward her, gripping her upper arms, pushing her sunglasses up her nose before leaning in for a peck on the lips. “You know, a dichotomy, a creature of circumstances and pure will. Poor kid from the estate's makes good, gets an education on her own merits and hard work, ends up paling around with an itinerant PhD, with a rude streak and an tendency to wander off. Pretty darn good going from no prospects to hot teacher.”

“Hot teacher?” Rose exclaimed.

“I won't tell anyone else if they haven't noticed yet for themselves,” Jon said. “Let's not argue about your merits, we've got a job to do and I think you're stalling”

“I'm not stalling,” Rose declared.

“You should be scared, are you?” Jon asked.

“Yes,” she paused before making the admission. “What if I fail?”

“You won't, you can't,” Jon urged. “This has to work, Rose,” he hissed. He loomed over her, his eyes darkening to the storm clouds and he glowed with the power of time. “You scare the hell out of me, Rose. Last night...last night, I swore you were dying in my arms, then something shifted within you, opening a door and bringing you into alignment with us. I'll never forget that, that as I held you, you changed.”

“I didn't do it by myself,” Rose replied, suddenly frightened by his candor.

“Others have died taking that much of time into themselves,” Jon said. “It had been tried before with disastrous results. If Verity had been unsure about you...but she wasn't. Screwed me up, they did, but hit the nail on the head with you. She and Penelope think you'll win.”

“For Tony, then,” she affirmed to herself. 

“Got the stamp? Jon asked.

“Yeah, somewhere in these endless pockets,” Rose aid pushing her arm deep into the plush vest.

“Have it at the ready,” he said. “You won't get two chances.”

“There is a proper bell,” Rose said, as Jon quickly jimmied the gate. The was a decorative covering on the post box for Coronation Day. “I'm not fooled,” Rose huffed picking at the bunting.

“I'm sure his neighbors are, for the first few disappearances, then he'll move on,” Jon replied. “He's got to blend in to feed.”

Prydon Burosa turned from his potted plants, turning a grin to meet them. A grin that repelled rather then welcomed them.

“Buddhist,” he yelped in warning, before realizing he knew Rose. He looked from Jon, then to her again.

“Dammit! I was so looking forward to a nice chat. Usually this time of day it's the Jehovah's Witnesses, but I would so enjoy the company of a couple of Mormon missionaries on such a fine day,” he licked his lips lecherously. “Oh, but do forgive me, my dear, I don't remember your name.”

“Yeh, sorry to bother you...” Rose stuttered to life.

“So what do you hope to achieve at such an early hour and with such an interesting companion?” Burosa queried. He squared himself toward Jon and glared at him for a bit before relaxing. “Ah, smart girl, right track...but too late. There is nothing a Temporal Magus can do to reverse what I have almost completed. Nice of you to bring him along, it's been years since I've encountered a male witch and the poor chap was hardly this young and was suffering horribly from gout. Young man....always hard to tell with your sort, though. You could be thirty-three or nine hundred and three. I'd never be able to tell.” 

“Sorry, temporal freak here,” Jon said in a friendly voice. “I'm not here to tinker with the past, Mr. Burosa, I do know my limits.”

“How few do!” he exclaimed examining Rose. 

“I'm the middle man here,” Jon said. “The girl has a proposal for you, I'm here to make sure it's fair and seal the deal.”

“Delightful! Let's hear it then,” he said suddenly turning a lecherous gaze to Rose. “Out with it girl, what's on offer?”

The smell of potting soil and new construction was suddenly overwhelmed with the sickly smell of humid mint. Rose's stomach turned instantly. His inner corruption, which she could detect even as a sensitive, now threatened to overwhelm her. She could feel the lost time, the stolen time and the rot at his very soul. She almost sicked up at his feet, but swallowed it down to look him steadily in the eye. She did not see the predator writ in his eyes, but something cold and mechanical which suckled at and flatted the world around it. 

“Let Tony go, take someone else,” she gasped.

“My dear child....” Burosa purred, “I would apologize, but I am hardly sorry. You see...I'm a bit of a gourmet in my old age. You don't get to be something as fine as me by supping on the common rabble. I have to take my time, make a game of it, stalk my prey, and your little brother was it this time. I was so very near my limits when I finally cornered him, you see.”

He looked Rose over at bit, and like all lonely, wicked men, he was inclined to gloat a bit. “I've fed well you see, young girls, vibrant grandfathers, men who just returned from war, mother's with infants still at the breast, I'm so very choosy. Maybe a young woman like you, but a bit more refined, with a useless degree and a job lined up for her in daddy's firm. I don't stick to any certain pattern and my tastes vary a bit by year and season. I've been called all sorts of things, the droop, consumption, chronic wasting disease, lupus...AIDS. How little medicine can help with these conditions,” he snickered. “I want explorers without caution who head out heedlessly into the world where I am waiting for them...” he scampered about his garden. “Oh lucky me, the whole world a giant smorgasbord of people to consume.” Borosu flapped about his garden like a little boy which only served to make him more evil.

Jon cut the celebration short, “Girl's got a proposal,” he sat down in feigned boredom on a lawn chair. Rose noticed that Burosa's monologue had gotten under Jon's skin and he was doing a good job hiding it, but she wanted to know why he was so upset.

“Well, out with it girl,” Burosa gruffed, upset at be cut short of his celebration of self.

“I....well, I.....I was thinking.....” Rose said, shaking with fear, the sunglasses threatening to slip down her nose as a sheen of sweat suddenly moistened her brow. “I thought that you'd....well, I ….” she shoved the glasses back on her nose and wiped away a sniffle. 

“Oh stop it, don't fall apart on me girl,” said Burosa. “I have enjoyed our chat, so rare to find someone who understands my true nature. But don't delay, for this is only putting off my inevitable last meal.” 

Rose could tell that he delighted in torturing her with the final desperate threads of her little brother's life. He hoarded it like a treasure, letting her glimpse it before snatching it away. In his widening mood she saw hope that he may invite her in to witness his actions. She recoiled in horror at the idea, but secretly nurtured it in her body language to him and pushed her will out to him. He suddenly, as if hearing her thoughts, added “I'll let you choose, his ending.”

“Me?” Rose asked, her blood boiling at his audacity. 

“Why yes, you choose. Do I end this now or spin him out for a few more days? The poor little chappy is quite terrified being locked up in his body with only me for company. But where there is life there is hope, they say. So choose!” he demanded.

“I hoped you'd take me for exchange instead,” she finally blurted out. “Let Tony go and take me.”

“Nah! Not the same, and believe it our not, self-sacrifice is not all that uncommon in my line of work.” He was lying, she could tell. He continued to look at her through lidded eyes, he tongue wetting his lips. 

“I'm willing, you know,” Rose whispered. “I know you. I would submit to you, willingly.”

“Oh, now that's a tasty bit,” Jon added. “I didn't know she had that in her.”

“Now why would you put the idea into my head when I could have both...the sister and the brother. Not that I would as choosy as I am,” Burosa chuckled darkly. “Come on girl, I can't have you offering yourself up and I cannot see the goods through all those layers. Kit off and take off those ridiculous pair of shades, you look like a chavette Bond girl.” 

“If you promise to free Tony,” Rose objected.

Burosa ignored her demand, “Show yourself, girl,” but Rose stood fast.

“In exchange for Tony,” she replied, shoving her hands into her pockets and scrunching her posture into a tight defensive position. 

“Stay out of this witch boy,” Burosa looked balefully at Jon. “You are radiating too much and she is saturated with your power, I cannot get a proper look at her. She might as well be your sister or your....” He looked at Jon and then at Rose considering.

He bounded over to Rose. “Oh...I must know. What does your future hold? Will you be missed?” He glared again at Jon and emboldened continued. “Has the witch boy caught your fancy or are you already......” He glanced at Jon and then returned to Rose with lustful eyes and an unbound eagerness. “Oh, Come here girl!” he demanded and put out his hand to drag her into his space.

That is when Rose struck, Jon's swift intake of breath milliseconds later than her own initiative. Her pocketed hand made a fast, direct line to his outstretched palm as swift and surely if she where giving him a peck on the cheek. 

“I was invited,” she hissed.

Burosa looked down on his palm and saw the grinning face of a golden wolf sinking into his flesh as Jon wrapped his arm around Rose's shoulder and snatched away the sunglasses. “Command him,” he whispered in her ear.

Burosa cried, “How could you?” he sobbed. Rose was not feeling particularly merciful at the moment and she stared at her mark willing it deeper inside of him. He held his afflicted hand as far from his body as he could. He was an open book to her as she delved deeper into his being and started to take control. “How did you do this?” he asked again pulling the skin along his forearm as if his afflicted hand was removable. “This is a farce, a joke. End it, or your brother dies now.”

“My mark, the bad wolf,” Rose whispered. “My will given form.”

“But you're human, you can't,” he fear started eating at him. “I was so sure.”

“Considering you are are dead man,” Jon interjected, “Rose happened to work her way through an absque schisma last night, quite brilliantly, I might add. So the answer to the question is: human plus,” he had said while drawing lazy circles on the back of Rose's neck. He full attention was suddenly captured by her reaction as she shuddered in pleasure. The small garden brightened noticeably and Burosa had to use the table to support himself. A rich golden energy filled Rose and Burosa fell to his knees. Rose could see herself in his eyes, much as when she could he Burosa in Tony's eyes that one time. 

“I'll do anything, let the brother go, of course. Just let me find someone else first, you do have some mercy for an old man?” he begged. “What do you want?” he pleaded, scuttling along the cobblestones to Rose's ankles.

“No!” said Rose as she stepped back. Burosa followed, on hands and knees, shrunken and a fraction of the man he was minutes before. 

“Talk to me!” Burosa demanded. “We must come to a settlement, this is unprecedented. A witch taking on one of my kind. We are supposed to hold each other in higher regard then the silly human cattle. What is it? This house? I can give you the house. I have a car, you can have that. My vacation home in Puerto Rico, yours. Remember En mi viejo San Juan, was on the radio for months. It's very exclusive on the slopes of El Yunque and surrounded by a national park.” 

“San Juan, Rose,” Jon said. “I've always wanted to go the the Caribbean, though I think Estrada wasn't thinking of El Yunque in that song.” Rose turned to him angrily before noticing that he as only amusing himself again. 

“Not interested,” Rose declared. She heading for the gate, pulling Jon with her, Burosa scrabbling behind begging.

“Happy Bloody Coronation Day!” she yelled, slammed the gate and ran down the alley. Jon followed her back the the bike. She could tell that Burosa had not followed. 

“Are you ok, Rose?” Jon asked. “Your shaking like a leaf. Here, take my overcoat and I'll get your helmet put on. We good? Now lets get out of this town. Have you ever been to Barcelona? I want to take you there. Don't worry Rose, he's done for. He can't feed off your brother anymore and you won't let him take another victim. It's just a matter of time now before nature takes its course. You've seen how dangerous it is — do you want to go home? Eat?” Jon guessed. “Running always makes me hungry. Oh, can you smell chips?”

“Yeah.” Rose laughed, “Yeah!”

“I want chips,” Jon said 

“You want chips and you can pay,” Rose leaned into him .

“No money” he replied simply.

“What sort of date are you? Come on then, tight wad, chips are on me, but we get them takeout and head over to the hospital,” Rose thought out loud. 

“Fine then,” Jon said putting on his helmet. “Soon enough this will be all over and you can get back to normal.”

“What's normal?” Rose laughed as she mounted the Vespa behind him and would her arms around his waist. “Snogging in the teacher's lounge?” she whispered into his ear. 

“Oi!” Jon exclaimed, blushing furiously. “Hold on, Tyler.”

Rose suddenly realized that her feelings for Jon had blossomed. He had supported her on little more than a gut feeling and she held onto him as they raced down the road with a little more surety in their nascent friendship. He had been confident, almost cocky in their confrontation with Burosa,but now she could feel the fear rolling of him through the faint skin to skin contact she had through his thin shirt. That was new, she had always been an open book to him, but now the tables were turned. He had been afraid - very afraid. Gunning the small engine, they roared down the narrow street, out of Borough and into the more familiar, cluttered streets of Peckham.


	11. Chapter 11

Rose removed her helmet and tried vainly to pull her sweat soaked bangs from her forehead. The hospital, four floors of concrete and glass, loomed over them, a institutional guardian to the small park and stand of trees it surrounded. It was familiar to Rose now, as it were an old friend come to tea. Rose grabbed Jon's hand and felt the spark of his surprise and a roll of pleasure at the genuineness of this simple act. 

“Truth be told, I was scared to death that he'd get the drop on you,” Jon said suddenly.

Rose was surprised, from his chirpy attitude at the chippy she had assumed that he a shook off whatever had him spooked. Rose had already moved on to the problem that was Tony, and Jon was still bothered by Borusa.

“Don't get me wrong, being human can be a drag some days, but stop me before I get like that,” Jon said. 

Rose didn't have to guess his meaning. “Don't worry, I'll let you know, loud and clear, if you are crossing that line,” she said.

Jon looped his arm into her elbow after they got the Vespa locked down and the takeout bags sorted. “Remember how I was telling you about my attempts at stoicism, Rose? Truth is, I didn't want to feel too much. I still don't,” he said as he fidgeted a bit with the entry door. 

“You can't choose not to feel, it still happens,” Rose replied, getting a bit anxious at the prospect of seeing Tony.

“I'm not one of you, Rose,” Jon said. “You've had a proper family life, they love you, you love them, no questions. But me, I have to choose to love them, they abandoned me.”

“So, what's the problem?” Rose said.

“The problem is that it is far more dangerous not to have feelings, something has to fill that space and I can see fear and hate spilling in its place,” Jon said. 

“You think that you'd end up like him?” Rose asked.

“He was someone's son,” Jon answered. “Maybe someone's husband? Someone's father? Then one day he went off the rails and made a bad choice. Point is, that at one point, in the distant past, he was as normal as me.” 

“Nah, he probably was the type to light the cat on fire as a little boy,” Rose said as she stabbed the lift's call button. The florescence of the hospital gave both her and Jon a sickly glow, but she couldn't be bothered by it. She felt alive, from top to bottom, the prior days trails erased from her body.

“You look fantastic, you know? Being a witch suits you,” he said.

She led them into the lift and hit the button for Tony's floor. “You aren't too bad yourself, a bit foxy when you aren't surrounded by teenagers and I'm allowed to have a look at you properly.” Rose smiled, and place a quick peck on his cheek. “Tell you what, when this is all over, make me a promise? Take down the painting of that white lady with the red rimmed eyes in your living room, she creeps me out and in exchange, I'll give you a chance to take a proper photo or two to put in that digital picture frame.”

The lift dinged and they emerged onto the hospital floor. The charge nurse looked up at them, and he looked at her curiously. “Trying to get my hopes up, Tyler?” he said. “You could disappear to Guam next term and I'll miss my painting of the Shadow Architect which I won as a door prize at the exhibition opening last year.”

“I'm not planning on going to Guam, it's a joke,” Rose replied. 

“Go if you like, I'll send my picture frame with you and you can fill it with beaches and sunsets, until global warming floods your classroom,” he joked.

“I'm not going that far afield, I'm afraid. What would mum, say?” Rose said. Having arrived at her brother's door, she hugged Jon stiffly, afraid this may be 'goodbye' since her task was done. “Thank You,” she whispered. 

“You're welcome,” Jon said. “Relax, it will be alright with time. You'll recover and so will Tony.”

“How can you be so sure?” Rose asked.

“Sheer force of will, I reckon. You'll make it happen, won't you?” he answered, his voice low and serious. “Runs in the family it does, that force of will. You don't just give up. You don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You said 'no'”. He struggled with these last words, awash with unfamiliar emotions. 

“You did too,” Rose said, releasing his arm and stepping into Tony's room.

“Keep in touch,” he said to the closing door. Rose had not waited for him, instead entering the familiar hospital room overcome with how easy she had become accustomed to the feel of his hand in hers, and how acutely she now missed it. What did tomorrow and the next few weeks hold? Would he keep her at arms-length, pretend nothing happened?

She pulled the curtain aside, setting her rapidly cooling meal on the end table. Tony was a mass of wires, and sensors, a hiss of oxygen and the constant beep of the pulse monitor. A blood pressure cuff seemed like a out of place bit of armor against his blue and white hospital gown. He lay there, a medical mystery, with unexplainable blood chemistry, erratic brain waves, and scattered readout on the paper trailing from the monitoring station. Now it was up to Rose to reverse whatever happened. She had stopped Burosa's attack, but getting Tony healthy again was a task she only had an hour or so to think about. 

The room was not empty, both of her parents stood in consultation with the doctor. “He was fading right away”, she was saying, “but his blood oxygen levels have perked up a bit. I've seen children give into illness very quickly, but he is stubbornly clinging to life. He hasn't worsened in the last hour which with so many hours of setbacks is almost progress.” Pete saw Rose enter the room.

“Where have you been, young lady? Last time I saw you was walking away behind that monster of a gate at that posh house with that man,” Pete said.

“I've left half a dozen messages on your phone, Rose,” Jackie sounded upset. “They've said he doesn't have much time left.” She closed the distance between them and enveloped Rose in a hug. 

“How is he?” she asked, afraid before her mother's resigned demeanor. Jackie had given up hope and had no more tears left. “They say he won't last the night.”

“He'll live, mum,” Rose said suddenly doubtful of her ability to reverse the stream of life force that Burosa had taken from Tony.

“That's a cruel thing to say to me, Rose,” Jackie squeezed her eyes, keeping down the intense pain in her heart.

“He will get better, mum,” Rose insisted, mustering her courage and willing it so.

“He won't survive another on of those seizures,” Jackie said. “I knew that our lives were changing for the worse the first time it happened. You warned me, Rose. You said 'bad wolf” and I dismissed you. If only I could have spent those last few healthy days....” Jackie said stoically.

Jackie was in a state of disarray, makeup worn off, hair in a simple ponytail. Rose suddenly felt guilty about her freshly showered state and the new power that simmered at the tips of her extremities. The experience had marked them both, but as careworn as Jackie had become over the last few days, Rose had began to almost glow with a golden aura as she thought of how she was going to make Tony alright.

“Can I sit with him?” she asked.

“There's two chairs,” said Jackie.

“I'll stay too,” Pete declared.

Tony, stay nestled in his white cotton blanket, Boo-boo doggie at his side, quite pale and looking quite dead already. Jackie sat to one side and Rose the other, but after a little while, Pete pulled himself up for the reclining chair and said in a quiet voice that couldn't handle it. Rose picked up a stray thought, a bit of powerful emotion transferred from father to daughter, and she understood his sudden fear for his yet unborn child, yet to be born into a work where perfectly healthy pre-schoolers fall ill with mysterious illnesses and waste away in hospitals. 

“I'm going to step out for a bite,” he said. “I'll be back, I will.”

Jackie acknowledge him with a nod. Rose sat very still while they were distracted with their leave-taking and with the patience of someone who spent hours filing sheet music as a student, went searching for the single missing page in the arrangement that was her life. 

Rose turned into herself and searched the darkness of her mind, the forests, wetlands and mountains that she conjured for herself the evening before behind her. She silence her mind and waited. For a long while nothing happened, and then it did. He moved, Prydon Burosa moved within her, and suddenly he attacked the edges of her mind with a fury, raining down his profanity laden abuse intermingled with pathetic begging for her to return him to his glory. His torrent poured off her and washed away in to the gutter. Suddenly Rose was accompanied by the light of her mother, she had leaned into Tony and caressing his forehead was telling him of the first time she met him in the delivery room, how good of a baby his was, how hungry and such a good nurser. Rose's mind merged with Jackie's and she reveled in the memory thing that someday she would have a baby of her own at breast. A flare of color and Jon's presence was there and she relived last night's kiss, not the crafty seduction of his payment during her changeover, but the heavy and familial one where his family was watching. That heavy kiss had reminded her of Tony's kisses and that in mind she picked up the faint essence of Tony himself, hidden away deep and sealed against Burosa's attacks.

“Tony!” she coaxed, in the best sisterly voice she could manage. “It's me, Rose. He's gone, Tony, you can come out, gingerbread-man. The fox is gone.” 

Burosa beat against her shields, trying to sup on the energy that passed from her to Tony. “You bitch, you can't leave me to rot like this,” he screamed at her. Rose swatted him away like a fly and Tony brightened a bit. 

“Tony, I have Booboo Doggie, would you like to hold him?” she sent to him within her mind. A brightening again and this time a tendril of his being uncoiled from itself to touch the memory she offered him. “Your in a nice room, with mummy and me, the sun is shining outside and I have a glass of orange juice and toast with soldiers.”

“Wose?” the word formed in her head within the wispy tendrils of Tony's unfolding consciousness. 

“Yes, it's Wose, cross my heart,” she said. “I have a big hug for you if you can find me. Come on, come closer,” she coaxed. She sent the strange golden power that was her toward him and felt him uncoil further, like a plant in the sunlight. The attack came directly from the wisp that the Tony, Burosa surged through him into her presence attacking her directly within her shields.

She was encompassed by her anger and righteous fury at the nature of his attack and she met him head one within the frail body of her small brother and he crumbled before her rage. She consumed both Tony and Burosa, but encapsulated Tony in stories of Mrs. Hemmerling and the library, and chicken and chips on Thursdays and reading chapter books about dragons at bedtime. As she did this, she felt the link to Burosa weaken, fray, then sever and she knew that he was finally rid of the demon. A few breaths later, Tony took a deep breath and fell into a deep and peaceful state, the pain that washed his features melted and his skin tone pinkened. Rose sat next to him and washed him with the golden glow that was herself, giving as much of her vitality as she could spare.

“Up and at 'em, Tony,” she cajoled. “I'm sure I can find you a nice cuppa cocoa, if you are a good boy and wake up soon.”

“Rose, oh Rose, something is happening,” Jackie shook her awake. 

Rose's heart twisted painfully, realizing that Jackie had mistaken Tony's turn for the better and the sign that this was his end. Tony's had grasped his Booboo Doggie to his chest, one eye was sleepily open and watching them. “He's going to be fine, mum. See?” 

“Go get the doctor, or than nice nurse at the desk,” Jackie commanded. “I'm not leaving him.” Tony's eyes finally found focus and he regarded his mother a few moment sleepily before his mouth twitched and he crocked out a faint 'mum.'

“Tony, oh Tony!” Jackie collapsed in sobs at his bedside. 

Rose pushed the call button and went to the doorway to fetch the nearest nurse. “You forgot me!” Burosa beat weakly at the edges of her awareness. Rose paused, taking on the wolfish aspect of her pack in the woods. “Fuck You” she replied the words passing her lips to bounce along the edge of the door frames. “Do your worst, Mr. Bloody Burosa.”

The nurse hurried out of the lift, her Ipad flashing their alarm furiously. They entered the room to find Tony wide awake holding his favorite book which Jackie had retrieved from his bag. 

“He said he wanted it, that you promised to read to him. He has also demanded orange juice and toast with soldiers,” Jackie was completely dumbstruck. The alertness was only temporary, for less than a page into his book he was already asleep, a very healthy and normal sleep. 

“Oh sweetheart!,” Jackie said after he nodded off. “If only this isn't the bright spot before the end.”

“He'll be fine, mum,” Rose said. “He asked for entertainment and food. It's been along time since he's eaten.”

“Friday night,” Jackie reminisced, “No real food since Friday. It feels like months have passed. And as for you, young lady – something has changed. I'm not blind you know, but I haven't had the energy to figure it out. Is it that Jon Carlisle from work? What a poor time to catch a bloke's interest?”

Rose opened her mouth to point out her mother's hypocrisy, but Jackie was too quick for her. “Yeah, pot meet kettle. Bit old for you isn't he and how'd you two fall in with each other anyways?

“We're not like that mum,” Rose said. “Bit of a story there, I'll tell you later.” Jackie was too concerned with Tony to push the issue further.

Later, the doctor talked to Pete and Jackie. “It's too soon to make any long term predictions,” she said. “But this is a quite a dramatic turnaround, and we still don't know what is wrong with him. I can't even be certain that being her helped, other than keeping him fed and hydrated. It's wait and see now, but at the moment, a couple more days like this and he'll be going home.”

Rose found herself completely drained at the news. She tried to keep her eyes open, but kept nodding off in the chair. 

“Rose, dear,” Jackie said, “you look knackered. Have your dad take you back to that post hotel he's staying at and let you have a lie down. Don't worry about us, I have Jason come round with supplies and company.”

Jackie mothered her eldest child and through Rose's fog she recognized the anticipation of hope in her mother's eyes. She hugged her suddenly, before letting her father lead her out to the carpark. His relief was palpable in the car, grateful that Tony had survived and Rose found herself finally letting go of a day long ago, when she awoke to a flat devoid of her father and his belongings. He had left and taken a bit of Rose with him. He had found love in another, and it didn't matter who he loved more now, she forgave him for that day and in the forgiveness she started to recover from a broken heart she didn't know that she possessed.


	12. Chapter 12

While Jackie stayed with Tony, Rose let herself be distracted by getting to know her father's girlfriend a bit better. They went back to the hotel her father was staying at for dinner and much to Rose's surprise she actually enjoyed their company. She could tell that Joan was really trying to make a connection now that the pale of Tony's illness had lifted as Joan grasped Rose's hand across the table at tea and smiled widely. Rose's new senses told her that Joan entertained a secret fantasy where Tony had died and she had Pete all to herself with no old family connections holding him down, but Rose also could tell that she also felt awful for having the fantasy and very relieved that Tony was better, small fantasy forgotten as if she never thought of it. Rose was surprised at her ability to detect it, but whatever touch telepathy that Jon had, it seemed she had also and she tried not to feel too guilty for prying.

Her father called in the morning and asked her if she wanted a ride to work, he had checked in with the hospital and Tony was showing marked improvement. Rose had no problem accepting his offer of a ride to work and she enjoyed the smooth ride of the car and the anticipation of a new normal day and the hope that Jon Carlisle was going to be part of it.

There was a small gathering of students at the gate and Pete remarked, “Looks like a school yard tussle, why couldn't you get a position at a better school, I'm sure there are many other places in the city take a talented girl like you.”

Rose did not want to argue about proximity and status with her father, the man who'd spent the best part of her life running away from Peckham. The teacher at the gate trying to break up the fight was Jon Carlisle himself and her heart took a sudden lurch in her chest reminded of their encounter at the park and the sweet kiss before his family. Her gaze was locked on his profile quite awhile before she realized that the student in question who was the aggressor in the altercation was not a kid at all, but Prydon Burosa.

“Drop me here,” she said to Pete. “Traffic has slowed to a crawl cause of the the gawkers, hang a left here at the alleyway and then a right, and you'll be back on High Street.”

Pete had no desire to idle in traffic and gave Rose's arm a quick squeeze before pulling to the curb to let her out. “Have a good day,” he paused before adding, “and while I have you all to myself for a moment, assuming Tony makes a complete recovery, how about coming to Cardiff on your break? I'd love you to see the flat, do some sight seeing?”

“When's the baby due? I should visit after it's born, give you and Julia a break and a night out,” Rose said. “I'd like to meet my sibling while she's still a baby,” she started out trying to be forgiving to her father but found herself genuinely interested in her younger sister. A sudden realization hit her the moment before the surprise in her confidence in the baby's gender, the realization that she wanted this relationship to mend and she really wanted a little sister to spoil.

“Sister, eh?” Pete asked. “That a prediction or a wager? I've got a tenner it's a boy with Julia's mum.”

She stepped out of the car and waved, feeling every bit the good daughter until she turned around and faced the commotion outside the gate, her very countenance changing as she refocused her purpose.

“I must speak to the head-master,” Burosa was demanding. “I will tell him of your lack of cooperation and un-professional manner.”

“The office is at the east entrance,” Jon pointed dismissively outside of the gate. “If you take you time and let him have his second cup of coffee it will go easier on you. Inside you lot!” he directed his order to a group of thirteen year-olds who had stopped their progress to watch what was going on. “Move it, before this old nutter decides you're his long lost grand kid.”

Half the group broke off and entered the school only to be replaced by another half dozen or so attracted to the commotion.

“You and the girl! Bit young for you isn't she, old man? Have you told her yet?” Burosa shouted at the top of his lungs. “I'll tell the Board of Governors! Cavorting with a student!”

Rose had closed the distance quickly. Jon spared a glance for the students that had heard the accusations. “Save your voice, ya nutter, you don't have much time left, I wager.” Burosa suddenly became aware of Rose, his whole demeanor changed from enraged to pitiful in a second. He was begging at her ankles before she had taken another two steps. The hair on the back of his head had fallen out and blacken cavities marked his skull. His eyes had sunken in, bit of his ear lobs and nostrils had pitted and the smell rising from his body was that of the grave.

“Girl,” he gasped out, “the things I could show you. You could be immortal if you let me teach you.” He pressed forward what was left of his formidable will and Rose could feel a compulsion surging down the line that connected them. He was weakening faster than Tony's recovery and Rose was determined to get every drop of vitality he had stolen returned to its rightful place. Burosa had no reserves to draw upon being so very old, and accustomed to absolute victory and having grown so choosy in victims, so he was forced to begging on is knees in a school yard. A gaggle of students looking on.

Rose tried not to be pleased in this reversal. She felt proud that Tony was on the mend as a result of her efforts, but she was not the type to revel in another's suffering. She could make him do anything, such was her power over him, but she was human and he was human no longer and she found herself bound to those social contracts that valued forgiveness and mercy over vengeance. Rose had a outlet for all the wrongs that had been done to her, the slights and the insults, an opportunity to punish the evil in with world and no one save Jon would know. Burosa groveled at her feet when the warning bell rang.

“The oldster's gone loony,” a girl shouted.

“He's been at Dr. Carlisle, there, to tell him where you lived,” her ginger friend added helpfully.

Rose found herself quickly improvising, trying to get the students moving in the direction of the door, “Didn't they arrest you? Pedophile in the candy store?” Burosa picked himself up and started limping down the pavement and back towards his silver car.

“That's it, getting too domestic. Everybody indoors!” Jon commanded. He followed Burosa a bit, escorting him off the grounds now that the student were cleared, a feat he accomplished on pure menace alone.

“He's going to bits, Tyler. You aren't playing with him are you?” Jon whispered above her ear as he returned from his escort quest. “Not that I'd blame you, considering.”

Rose yearned to grab his hand in the school yard, knowing that, at least in this place, nothing had changed for her since a week ago. Knowing that next to her was a body which had held her at her most vulnerable, a body that had pressed into hers, cool lips and long fingers weaving into her hair. “Ah, Rose. You are transmitting quite loudly, you might want to siphon some of that energy back to your brother soon before we both lose our teaching positions to the things I am struggling not to think of right now.”

Rose looked into Jon's face, and saw the darkened pupils and the flare of his nostrils before releasing the train of thought. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“Can't say what I'd do managing the life force of three entities,” Jon admitted. “I'm all for the bluster and run method of change. Rather save the work than destroy, me. Watching you go through this is a bit distressing. I've realized that I've become quite set in my ways.”

“It isn't his life, Prydon Burosa. It's stolen,” Rose said as they came to the junction that would lead them on their separate ways. “He isn't human.”

“The longer this lingers on, the more I will worry about your humanity, Rose,” Jon answered. “There are always two parties to abusive relationship,” his voice lowered to a whisper as the final bell rang. “Gotta go!” he waved.

“Wait!” yelled Rose. “What do you mean?”

“I've seen it in myself more often than I'd like to admit, that's why I can see it in you. Don't confuse what you are doing as justice, because with you let cruelty enter into the punishment then the wickedness you are trying to eliminate from the outside world takes root inside you.”

“I don't want to talk about it,” Rose said defensively.

“Check on Tony,” Jon said over his shoulder as he rounded the corner.

“Doctor Carlisle? You didn't tell me you know him,” the voice of Stephen Willis purred at her side as he slide up next to her. They turned back towards their classroom, the cacophony of voices from the first hour chorus echoed down the hallway.

“I do now, I guess. Just met properly this weekend,” Rose answered suddenly self-conscience.

“Properly, eh?” he teased. “Your secret is safe with me, Miss Rose and the Doctor, woulda thunk it” he said with a wink in his voice.

Rose had the day to think, prepping the various choirs for their end of year appearances. She thought on cruelty and Jon's words. Mo's niece had been given a large floppy bunny when her mother remarried with the specific instructions if she ever became mad or jealous of her step family that she could take it out on the stuffed animal. The animal was destroyed within a month, not because the child had any large amounts of envy and anger associated with the step-family, but merely because she had been permission to be cruel to something that couldn't fight back. Sudden Rose with her heightened senses could perceive the pain of the toy and she wondered for a moment if Jon was waiting on this resolution as a test of her character.

She popped out of the confines and poor cell-phone reception of the building between classes to check on her brother. His improvement baffled the staff, but no one was more happy to being party to a miracle then the members of pediatric ward.

“Modern medical marvel, he is,” she told Willis.

“Clueless modern medical doctors, more like,” was his reply.

“Nah, we had a nice doctor and the nurses where exemplary,” Rose said observing Jon across the cafeteria talking to Christine DeSousa again. Modern workplace romances she mussed, all the freedom to be overwhelmed with envy but none of the the latitude to go displace Christine at his side. Across the room she held his attention though, his eyes sought her out constantly and he lost the thread of the conversation on more than one occasion. He was hiding again, had that shroud of normalcy up and running. She loaded up a box of music theory homework she had to grade this evening. Out her window she could see Burosa car still parked on the street. At the first bell after lunch, she dashed down to Jon's room during her prep period. She knocked on his door, pulling him out of his just beginning class and drawing a few catcalls from some of the more ribald students.

“What's the matter, Miss Tyler?” he asked, professional mask in place.

“You think I'm being unnecessarily harsh with him” she asked, “and you don't think the punishment fits the crime.” For a moment something ancient and alien looked at her from behind his eyes.

“Frankly, I'm scared Tyler. He was one of us once and he got stuck like that. Maybe he ended up in a situation like you are in now and made the wrong choice,” Jon looked around, fearing an unexpected audience. “I'm scared that once you cross the line from taking what was Tony's and meting out punishment that you'll get stuck too.”

“Fair enough, I'll finish this today. He's waiting for me out there, but I can't meet him on the grounds. Can you take a message to him?” she asked. “That I'll meet him at Peckham Rye south entrance at four. I'd go myself, but I don't think I can trust myself at the moment.”

“I'll do it on my prep,” Jon said and added, “Want me to come along?”

“No, I have to do this alone,” Rose answered, not wanting him to witness things if she couldn't keep control of her anger.

“Let me know how it goes, please?” he entreated, before turning back to his class which had become progressively unruly.

“How do I end it?” she whispered.

“I don't expect him to remain corporeal for much longer. He's just a collection of memories and hunger,” Jon leaned out of his door frame.

“I just need to command him.... to do what?” she asked in exasperation.

“Do it. Just tell him that he is dead. That he died a long time ago,” Jon said. “You must convince him and you must be authoritative about it so he can't sneak away into another victim.”

“He won't. I have him trapped!” Rose retorted.

“And he thought he had Tony,” Jon supplied. “Oh and Rose, I took that painting down, the one with the red eyes.”

She paused, a small smile on her face, and walked down the hall.

With no reason to stop by the daycare for Tony, she passed by the building. The children in his pre-school had all made card for him which had been delivered that morning. Jackie had read all the cards and declared them adorable. The kiosk was still open, the stylists seeming to manage the place just fine for a few days without their manager. For a moment it was distressing to think the the world would go on just fine if Rose, Jackie and Tony Tyler suddenly disappeared, but then thinking on it more she was heartened by the resiliency of human kind. For a change, she headed south, towards Peckham Rye.

She tried not to think of Burosa on her walk. She thought of her parents and their new love interests, how love flared, matured and then either faded or solidified. She had never had a relationship get to the point of love. Jimmy had been all lust and youthful adventure, a strike out for independence she had no business claiming. Mickey had been safe, undemanding,a bookmark in the stalled trajectory of her life. She'd experience sex with out love, sex based on fondness and she suddenly wondered what sex based on love might be like. Mrs. Hemmerling had six children, but would never mention sex or related biological or emotional subjects, but she could wax poetic on her hot flashes and change of life, like now she was over the threshold of fertility that those equally personal subjects where fair game.

Her mum believed in true love and had the Regency novel collection to prove it, but her true love loved and left her so many times that the book of their life was rather dog eared and tattered. Sudden Jason is a part of her life and the old is replace with the new. Julia is new for her father and life goes on. A baby sister will be born and Rose's family life will change again. There must be an unwritten rule of attraction that she hasn't been trained to pay attention to, something to explain the sudden clenching of her heart seeing Jon outside the gate this morning. Rose pulled her thin jacket about her as she approached Burosa's car outside the gate, protecting that particular memory for a moment longer.

He was out of the car, before she walked up to him, a snarl on his lip.

“Please...” I can teach you so much. “Immortality is in your grasp...”

Rose, who had begun the morning a good mood, suddenly felt numb. She had lost the motivation for her revenge. His countenance was horrible, but she could not find herself moved by his condition, for she was battling her own questions as real life resumed about her. He had lost most of his teeth, the sores on his cheeks were openly weeping, he was a shamble of a skeleton, held together with evil and force of will. He stood in contract to the beauty that was the Victorian garden behind him. Rose made for the dedication plaque for the garden club and Burosa shambled behind her.

“Leave!” she turned on him and shouted.

“Leave?” he cried, “after I've followed you all this way.”

“You are dead. Nothing but a shambling corpse,” she made her voice as authoritative as she could. “Become what you are and stop pretending to be alive.”

“No!” he screamed. “You called me out here.”

“And now I am telling you to go and get it over with,” Rose said. “Jon warned me that it wasn't healthy to punish you slowly and now I believe him. You have a nice unmarked grave waiting for you if you will just drop the pretense and get it over with. I am done with you and you are nothing,” she growled at him channeling the energy of the Bad Wolf into his dispersal.

Her words had immediate effect, the very flesh powdered to ash along his bones and he babbled a shrill litany. “I love the flesh, fine food, fine wine, the wind in my hair. You take it all for granted, you mortals. I'm human, I've been more human than you've been for centuries because I appreciate it more than you,” he cried as the wind blew more of the the ash from the bones. His frame twitched again. “You don't even know the best bits yet girl, to hold new life, the sweat of a lover, the love of a grandchild...I....could....have....given.....it....to.....you......forever,” he rasped as the last of the bone fell to ash.

She sat next to the puddle of clothing until the sun went down five and a half hours later, just to make sure he wasn't coming back. All the things he offered to her, she had already, or would have, in the normal course of human events. She hadn't experienced most of them yet. But she experienced one thing today. Her brother was recovered from a long illness and that was quite enough life for her to revel in.

Eventually she grew cold as the sun set a cream colored plimsoll came into view.

“Couldn't stay away. Come on Tyler, you've held your vigil,” Jon's voice pulled her from her musings. “Just a pile of clothes,” as he rummaged through the pockets. “Ah hah!” he exclaimed as his pulled a wallet and keys from the pocket. He pulled a wad of cash from the wallet and placed it in the donation box, put the wallet underneath an urn, and the keys he tossed into the koi pond. “I'll get to the clothes, they'll find the car and think the old nutter drowned himself in one of the ponds.

“Come away with me, Tyler,” he held a arm down to her to pull her up. “Why'd you choose here of all places?”

“That's just it. This place is crawling with people on a nice day, but everyone is ignoring everyone else. It's actually quite lonely in that respect,” she said keeping her place on the ground, not quite ready to leave.

“Definitely off my list for future dates now,” Jon quipped.

“Don't go near the car,” Rose warned.

“What? School teacher collared for disappearance of raving loon who was stalking his girlfriend,” he did is best RP announcer voice as he walked over to the nearest set of bushes with the pile of clothing. He returned five minutes later a smile on his face. “There's a homeless camp hidden in the old hatchery, I think they'll appreciate the clothing. One of them greeted me with 'Heya, Harry! How's Ginny?' Potterheads can be homeless too, I guess.”

“Perhaps he saw the movies,” Rose said.

“Come on, Tyler! Up you go.” he said, but Rose refused to move. Jon defeated, sat down next to her.

“He's gone, Tyler. Time to shift,” he playfully bumped her shoulder. “Didn't your mum ever tell you that the cold ground will give you pimples on your bum? Oh, don't melt on me, Tyler! Man up and stand.”

“I'm a better man where I'm at right now,” Rose said, but finally gave into his pestering and moved.

He caught sight of the pair of shoes left behind. “We're done here, Tyler,” he leaned over and arranged the shoes side by side. For the second time that day, she caught the ancient man behind is eyes, as he looped his arm in her and led her down the path to his car.

“Come back to the manor,” he whispered. “You can give me a opinion on my bare spot on the wall and find you a shot of something to warm you...” He cast about a moment more, before adding, “or maybe cocoa. Something domestic. Oi! Don't give me that look, you won! Tony's on the mend, the bad guy is no more and if you wear a skirt to school again tomorrow, I think I'll go spare. Did I leave anything out?”

Rose broke out in a sob. But she was not unhappy, but relieved and filled with joy. Once that damn broke, she had a week's worth of unspent tears to release on Jon's shirtsleeves. Her eyes itches from the sobbing and she was suddenly warmed with the release of emotion.

“Hush, none of that!” he said. “No crying.”

“I know, you're getting all the bad part of the relationship on the front end of things,” Rose agreed still crying.

“Shut it will you. Don't remind me of the stupid, insensitive things I've said. I've changed, we've both changed since then. And please stop crying, cause it's contagious.”

They were almost to his car, waiting for traffic to clear when he pulled her into a bus shelter. “Come out of the wind for a moment.” In the dim florescent lights he started kissing her tears away. Then he captured her mouth so she tasted the salt of her tears on his lips. “I'll hold you tight, and you forget. Forget Burosa, forget your mum and dad and Tony and just be Rose....just think about being Rose...”

“Thought you forgot my first name,” Rose finally woke from her stupor a few minutes later.

“Well, tis the best bit, save it for special occasions,” he looked around the shelter. “Time to go. Not that I am not interested..., but I think you are a prime candidate for a good night's sleep.”

“Thanks, I'm on the mend myself,” Rose said wanting very much for Jon to kiss her again.

Much later Rose woke up on the old couch in the carriage house apartment, the patchwork pillow under her chin and a hand made afghan wrapped around her. Jon was not at his desk as she heard the telltale sounds of keyboard work, but at her feet on the floor working on a laptop. Rose watched as he hunted and pecked his way around the keyboard, fingers and equations flying.

Jon worked steadily and then said without acknowledging her waking, “Tyler, you mum rand your mobile and she said either she or your father would be by to pick you up. They're springing Tony from the hospital today. So you better start waking up and shoot Willis an email. We've less than two weeks as official co-workers to suffer through and you might as well get credit for good behavior when you deserve it,” he gave her a grin that bordered on lascivious.

“Dark out still?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Jon said, “and I have a final first hour that I didn't get re-written and I got word some smart-alec thinks he's got the answer key.”

The small homeless camp in Peckham Rye housed about eight to twelve persons in the summer, one such ventured forth on a warming summer morning to encounter a rather nice pair of men's leather loafers. She considered them for a moment, looked at her own scuffed up and holey trainers for a moment before kicking them off and trying on the abandoned shoes. The fit wasn't perfect, and improved much when she turned them over and knocked out the last bit of ashes into the wind.


	13. Chapter 13

“Wose is here, Wose is here!” Tony bolted across the classroom to the doorway. Rose scooped him up in her arms, he had only just regained the weight he had lost in the hospital and she was afraid that his growth was permanently stunted. 

“How's your mum and Uncle Jason?” asked Anna Marie loading up Booboo Doggie and Tony's lunch tote and bag. “You mum says he's a fabulous cook and a deft hand with the dishes afterward.”

“You tell me, he's your uncle. The women in your family must have had a hand in his upbringing,” Rose teased back. “But, he's joined us for Codfella's on Thursdays, family tradition and all.”

“Wose, time to go home,” Tony tugged on her sleeve. “Off we go with the Doctah.”

“Your new bloke a doctor too?” Anna Marie pressed for more information. “Know he drives a nice car, alright to be some people, eh?”

“He's not 'that' sort of doctor, he's got a PhD,” or two she added mentally. “Tony seems to think that since they first met in the hospital that he's a proper doctor, and leave it to my mum to make the nickname stick, at least in our family.”

She picked Tony up, though she knew he was fully recovered.

“I hold Booboo Doggie and you hold me,” Tony observed solemnly. “Who's going to pick you up Wose?” he said and broke into a fit of giggles.

Tony said his goodbyes and they walked out the loading area where Jon was parked with the car. Jon was scanning the local news on Rose's smartphone, while Rose loaded Tony and got him buckled into the booster seat that had found a second home in the Carlisle's car.

“Go fast, Doctah,” Tony ordered as they pulled out of the parking lot. The Carlisle's car had become familiar enough over the last few weeks that Tony now attempted to drive from the back seat via royal fiat. 

Rose was afraid to look, so Jon had kept an eye on the headlines. “Nothing in the news feed about our mysteriously missing shopkeeper?” 

“Nope,” he replied with his endearing habit of popping his p's at the end of the sentence. “Totally vanished,” he said pulling up to the loading area in front of the estate to drop them off. “You coming up?” she asked.

Jon was very different now than he was six weeks ago when he cornered her in his apartment in the carriage house and stopped short of kissing her. He had put away his pinstripe suits which had been his work armor in favor of the black leather jacket, work jeans and colorful jumper. The recollection of that first encounter in the study and Jon's arrogance stood in contrast to the subsequent, frequent and much less arrogant embraces that had highlighted their summer. 

Something about the quality the light highlighted the stubble on his cheek. “Forget to shave?” Rose asked. 

Jon handing Tony's rucksack from the back seat paused to rub his chin. “Drat, took you less that a day to notice. I get tired of the shaving in school year.”

“Well, it's dead sexy and I'm glad you reserved it for after the term is over,” she graced him with a tongue touched grin.

“Dead sexy, eh?” Jon quirked an eyebrow. “My mother and Verity are all into the feminine mystique and totally forget that being a man has it's own brand of mystery. Facial hair falls right into it.”

“I'll have a beard when I grow up,” Tony said clambering out of the back seat. There had been mornings now in the flat when three adults shared that steamy mirror and Tony was fascinated by Jason's morning rituals. Rose was suddenly saddened by the nothing of an adult Tony.

“Wish, he'd stay four. He's the perfect age,” she added in a black melancholy. 

“Almost did, that one,” Jon replied before snapping at himself, “Enough of that line of thought. I'll find a place to park and be right up. Leave me that pack.”

“I've got it managed,” Rose snapped.

“I know you can,” said Jon, “but your going to get a job a move away on me and I want you to take advantage while you can,” he gave her his most famous eyebrow waggle before pressing on. “Seriously though, we need to talk about it.”

“Wanna cuppa and plate of nibbles?” Rose shouted as she pulled Tony along to the stairwell.

“And banana bread,” Jon shouted back to her. “Let's get all domestic while we've got the chance.”

Rose made the tea and a couple of bacon sarnies. The kettle in the hob had finally died it's final death to be replaced by Jason with a shiny, chrome electric kettle. Rose had no screaming kettle as back up to her alarm clock anymore and she missed it. When she entered the front room Jon and Tony were playing playing with plastic dinosaurs on the floor. Rose placed their mugs and sandwiches on the end table. Johns messy brown locks and Tony's red huddled together. Later tonight in his workroom, Jon would shed his public personae and become the tinker and itinerant inventor, lord of time, and keeper of secrets, but for the moment in this space he was her problem. He was at one moment rushing her to towards a conclusion of what was them when she wanted to savor their time together, then he would insist holding back when she wanted her life to move on. 

Jon has crafted an illusion on floor, a prehistoric world complete with flying pterodactyls. His deft fingers shaped ancient trees, volcanoes grew and smoked as he pulled them from the floor, lumbering forms of ancient beasts where he cupped his hands. 

“It's an illusion, Tony,” Rose warned. “It will melt away like ice cream, but I wouldn't trust the dinosaurs not to bite.” She hovered over Jon's shoulder as he drew in a pond complete with alligators. 

“Missed the most important bit,” she said leaning past him and cupping her hands. The idea formed in her head and she willed it into being. Opening her hand she released a tiny common garden dragon into the pond. She then added a couple of gronkles, a hideous zippleback, three flightmares and a whispering death before warning Tony not to touch them. 

“Toothless!” screamed Tony. 

Tony was completely spellbound by the display, but Rose and Jon had frozen in place, their bodies pressed together. She could smell the leather of his jacket and the gel he used on his hair while he could feel the warmth of her body along his thigh and wrist. 

“You're giving me a reason to stay, Tyler. Wanted to sort out Verity's finances, cover my mother's favor and move on. Flit into their lives, flit out again, make them worry about me in the interim.” Tony ran off to get his dragon manual to compare pictures and Jon took the opportunity to pull Rose into a kiss.

“Good cuppa, I might add,” he took a quick sip when Tony bounded back. “I declare a prehistoric picnic,” Jon moved the plate of sandwiches to the floor. 

“Penelope and Verity has pulled a fast one, I think,” Jon said. “Been almost bearable to live with them these last few weeks. Heck, a couple months back those two were a pair of regrets: regret she had me and regret she asked her to have me.” 

“Improved, then?” Rose asked

“Yeah, the hovering has stopped. I'm no longer mad man behind the blue door. I'd even say they had grown complacent,” he smiled. “Well....” he drawled, “supposed, I did that on purpose. But suddenly, I'm too preoccupied to raise their hackles on purpose. You'd have asked me a few weeks ago and I would have claimed that I never wanted this type of companionship in my life.”

“If you'd ask me a few weeks ago, I wouldn't have wanted anything to do with my dad,” Rose said. “But look at me now, scheduling a visit over the holiday to babysit for them.” 

“Remember how I told you how I carried a torch for my psychotherapist?” Jon asked. “Called me alienated, she did. I always figured myself for a renegade or something more aggrandized. I'm a bit mad, not that you haven't noticed. You've grounded me quite a bit and well, they want to keep you; I mean Penelope and Verity.” 

“Why do you have to spell it out for me?” Rose asked. “It was quite obvious, I met with their approval.”

“I'm leaving,” Jon said. “Not before the end of summer, but soon. I've been selected for a post-doc program in the States. There were only two openings this year and I applied last February. Between the amateur rocketry and and the impressive CV, well, I'm pretty lucky to be in.”

Rose's eyes had grown glassy. “You're leaving me behind?” 

“No, not exactly,” he responded. “Well, you've got your mum and Jason, Tony, my mum and Verity, Willis and bloody Jeff Delobel over at Coal Hill and Ricky...er Mickey?”

“You're avoiding the issue,” Rose said. Jon who had been watching Tony play with the mud by the little pond he has created. 

“It's just as well don't you think?” he said. “You've got to find your own life, have your own career. I keep wanting to make you come with me. I know I can make you want it. But it's not right to do that.” 

“Wose, I'm bored.” Tony had grown restless.

“Go find your book about dinosaurs and we'll see how close the illustrations are to Jon's picture,” Rose shooed him out of the front room knowing it would take him time to find the book. 

“How could you compel me to want to?” Rose asked, quietly angry through her curiosity. 

“How'd you know I was a witch?” Jon rubbed at the back of his neck nervously. “It was like you laid my soul bare, so intimate, like a long lost lover. Verity and Penelope were happy for me, that I was noticed, but they advised, considering your delicate position as a student teacher, to wait until the end of term. I waited and then you walked into my life. I just about fainted on the spot. You came for me, I was doomed when you crossed my threshold.” 

“I did, and you are,” Rose agreed.

“Well, don't I get a say in it?” Jon replied. “My life derailed by falling in.... Sweet gods, Rose, I've just started exploring this part of myself.|

“So you're giving me up? Leaving me behind with my family for my own good, because you are scared of this part of yourself?” Rose finished for him angrily. 

“I haven't given you up,” Jon said. “It's just my choices and my future have suddenly gotten mixed up with your choices and your future. The post-doc, it's two years, a small stipend and a tiny flat, and if you want to wait for me, try the long distance thing, we can give this a proper go....live together, be a proper couple?” 

“You'll meet some female mathematician,” Rose suggested with a hint of resentment. 

“You'll start dating Jeff Delobel,” Jon admonished. 

“You'd deserve it if I did!” Rose cried.

“Give over, Tyler!” he demanded. “We're on the same side in this. “I don't want to leave you, you don't want me to leave,” he pounding his fist on his leg. “Sometimes I feel so thick, Mister thick thickity thick from thick town.” 

“Wose, I need help finding it,” Tony called from the bedroom.

Rose got up to go, but Jon pulled her into an embrace, “Hold for a mo, Tyler,” he kissed her again. “I'm suffering from something terribly domestic,” he said. “You'll make a grown up out of me yet.” 

Rose had felt his hand sneak up the exposed area above her waist. “It's not fatal, people suffer from it all of the time.” 

“Let me make love to you tonight,” Jon suggested. “I know that sex isn't a plaster for our troubles, but I want every second of you I can steal away.”

“There's Tony and mum will be home in a few,” Rose said, “and even though I'm an adult, she's not above delivering a slap if she thinks you are out of line, mister.” 

“Wose!” Tony called from the bedroom again, but Jon held tight. “Problem is that my emotions aren't too reliable.”

“There is only one emotion that I am interested in the moment. I guess my question is: Do you love me?” she asked him. She thought she knew he did, but he had never declared that over their weeks together. 

“How would I know? It's not an emotion that has been modeled for me growing up. Fierce loyalty, wicked lust, a yearning that follows me when you are not around, grief at the notion of leaving you behind...sums me up quite nicely. It might be love if I'm a hero or obsession if I'm a villain. 

“Sounds like love to me, if that helps you choose between hero or villain,” she extricated herself from his embrace to help find Tony's book, out of his line of sight on the top of his dresser. 

When she came back and had Tony firmly ensconced with his book in his room, Jon was at the sink washing up their plates. “Goddard Space Flight Center, did I tell you that?” he called out to her over the noise of the sink. “Might lead to a position at NASA or Centre National D'études Spatiales if I brush up on my French. It will be at least good enough to secure a tenure track position back here with you. I'll be back on holidays, of course, but I have to admit I'm really looking forward to it.” 

Rose, felt the beginning of a sudden relief, as suddenly the time lines she was being trained to read resolved themselves for a moment. She couldn't read herself or Tony or her Mum because they were family. She looked and couldn't read Jon either....as her resolve hardened. 

“Jonathon Carlisle!” she called.

“Right here. You don't have to go all full name on me, and it's 'Jonathan Wilfred Carlisle the Second' if you please. 

“I want to ask you something, proper like.”

“Alrighty then. Go ahead,” he yelled from the kitchen.

“I want to see your face when I do it.”

Jon appeared in the frame of the kitchen, hands rubbing a striped dishtowel, her mum's apron around his slim waist. 

“Fire away, my fair damsel! Troi to my Riker, Jadzia Dax to my Worf, Keiko to my O'Brien” he responded cheekily. 

“Oi, fanboy!” Rose exclaimed. “How'd you ever get that collection anyway?”

“I inherited it from my mum,” he answered sadly.

“Penelope?” she asked.

“No, other mum. Her form of escape from her hellish marriage, I guess,” he said. “I miss her something terrible. I lost my charm when I was no longer a pretty little baby boy. Don't know what she'd think of me as a grown man, but I was a disappointing teenager causing so much strife in her life those last few years. Took to reading her books to remember her by.” 

“You might have to give up your science fiction if you enter the world of science fact with your post-doc. Imagine it's a bit of a pay cut too?” Rose ventured on a hunch.

“First you take my painting now you are threatening my books. You better have some better to offer,” he gave her a saucy grin. “And to answer your question, they set the stipend assuming by the time you're post doc that you've got a few dependents. I should do fine after a few years. The other post-doc coming in with me is bringing her husband and kids from China,” he responded, eyes widening at her line of questioning. 

“Wait...you don't think? It's too soon, isn't it? I mean...” he floundered.

Rose concentrated real hard, he had only just begun to teach her how to apperate objects from the future, but she knew her course of action was locked in when the fuzzy little box filled her hand. 

“Johnathon Wilfred Carlisle the Second,” she got down on one knee before him, presenting the box and opening it for him, “will you marry me?” She stood, and removed the simple gold band from the box and slid it onto the ring finger of his right hand. “Don't know the proper etiquette coming at it from this side of things, but I think my intention is clear. If you want to travel abroad and study the stars, I want to be at your side. If you'll have me?” she had started to cry overcome with the emotion of the moment.

Jon's eyes had grown glassy as well and he crashed his lips to hers in acceptance and silent benediction opening a connection between them. ~My Rose. You are my everything. I'm yours forever.~

Rose basked in his presence before a step on the landing and a key in door broke them apart. 

“Tyler!” Jon hissed. “Your blouse is done up crookedly.” How he managed that in the few minutes of their embrace puzzled her, but he did a good job of buttoning her up. “You'll get me slapped, Tyler!”

“They're going to have to get used to it,” Rose said as the door opened for Jackie and Jason. Tony barreled out of the bed room and launched himself at his mother's legs. Jackie gave Jon the eye for a uncertain moment. 

“Staying for dinner, Jon?” Jackie asked.

“Nah, car's got a date with Verity's bridge club tonight. Besides, mum's got a banana cream pie in the fridge with my name on it,” Jon said. 

“Fish and Chips for tea tomorrow?” Rose asked. Jon looked at Jackie for approval before nodding. “Jon's got news. So do I on the job front, that is. It's alright, right?” she asked.

“Be nice to see my daughter for a change,” Jackie gave her approval as Rose usher Jon out the door. 

“Goodbye, Rose,” he said, swooping in for a peck on the lips before bounding down the stairs. 

“Rose, why did you invite him for Thursday dinner, that's family dinner?” Jackie asked darkly. “Cheeky that was.”

“Earth to Jackie, she asked him for a reason,” Jason observed. I've been a part of family dinners for the last month, and I don't seem to recall you asking Rose's permission. 

Rose not wanting to get in the row over the merits of Jon versus Jason went to her room to change into a warmer shirt. She grabbed a brush to pull through her hair and the true adult she witnessed the day of her warning stared back, the older face with knowledge and memories of pleasures she had now experienced. 

“Rose!” Jackie shouted from the hallway. “I didn't mean to natter at you soon as I walked in the door. Let's have a chat, love.” Rose made herself presentable before going out. Jackie was at the table with the check book. 

“Four pounds!” she groused. “That's all we have til the end of the month. Cept, your father actually sent a check which I haven't deposited. He says Joan is going to set up a direct deposit from her paycheck which is more steady, can you believe that?” 

“Really?” Rose said, “now that is classy.” 

“My Pete has been gone along time, maintenance checks must be like paying for the same book over and over again. Nothing new with us for him,” Jackie sighed.

“You married him at nineteen?” Rose was careful with this line of inquiry. 

“Don't you get any ideas, missy! You won't be making my mistakes,” Jackie said.

“Bit beyond that age now mum, I'm twenty-three already and depending on where I find a job...well Tony will have a room of his own soon,” Rose continued diplomatically. “Besides, getting married at nineteen wasn't a total disaster, you've got me and Tony to show for it.” 

“My highest high and my lowest low all in one package, I'll admit,” Jackie said thoughtfully. “I'm worried about you and that Jon Carlisle. He's too old for you Rose. A man his age should be married already or...wait, he's not a divorcee with a half dozen kids in a cothold out in the country is he?” 

The look on Rose's face was all the answer Jackie needed. “Look, all I'm saying is, that a man his age will either commit and if he won't he's not worth your trouble. If you get to the point where you think he's the one, ask him to marry you. It's the twenty-first century, worked pretty darn well with Jason. Didn't tell you that, did I?” she winked. “Asked him myself, not ten minutes ago. Said I needed a good head in the house for numbers now that you are moving on.”

“Oh, mum, that's wonderful news. I'm assuming he said yes?” Rose hugged Jackie. 

“Well, not in so many words, but I think him saying 'I'm your's' summed it up quite nicely”

Jason came in, wearing the apron that Jon had worn earlier, an apron that neither Jackie or Rose ever seemed to remember using themselves. Three glasses and a sippy cup balanced on Tony's hardcover dinosaur book. Tony followed with a bottle of sparkling juice. 

Jackie grabbed the bottle. “Oh look, a particularly bubbly year!”

They sipped their bubbly and danced in the front room of the small flat and for once Rose knew what Jon had meant about seeking the world through his eyes. All of the interconnections, what was, what is and what will be. She saw the leaves blow across Peckham Rye and the clouds move across the moon on a London skyline. She looked back in time to see her huddled figure in a past time being drawn to Diu Solum and her future now past. 

Much to her shock Jon's voice spoke in her head. ~Tyler, what are you doing taking a wander in my mind?~

~I was thinking about Peckham Rye~ she said.

~So was I. You know what this means?~ Jon asked.

~That I'll never mess up another Star Trek or hard science question again on quiz night at the Pub?~ she responded saucily. 

Tony came over to Rose and clambered onto her lap. “Jon made the dinosaurs, Wose.” 

“And I made the dragons,” Rose whispered adjusting him on her lap and nuzzling her nose into the smell of shampoo in his hair.

~Thinking of me, Tyler?~ Jon asked. ~You are feeling all warm and comfortable~

~I'm cuddling Tony~ she replied. ~You're feeling happy and satisfied, been thinking of me?~

~Banana cream pie, Tyler, the ambrosia of the gods.~ he said.

~You are comparing me to banana cream pie?~ she teased. 

~It's my favorite!~ he tried to comfort her. ~It's going to be hell until I can see you tomorrow, fancy sneaking out?~

~Tomorrow, Jon, and all the tomorrows after that. Just hold on.~ She whispered the last sentence into Tony's hair. 

“Hold on!” Tony replied. “That's what you said, Wose. Hold on.”

“Oh and you did beautifully, love,” she couldn't help as a tear escaped into his hair as the room was filled with music and bubbly and Jackie and Jason's moment with each other.

In an eclectic flat in the upper level of an old carriage house, with funny blue doors that pushed in when you expected them to pull out, Jon Carlisle admired his engagement ring, sipped a glass of wine and pondered which books they'd take with them to the States. ~Have I told you how much I loved you lately?~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~The End~


End file.
